


a life still permanent

by iguessyouregonnamissthepantyraid



Series: Post-Notpocalypse [2]
Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Dysfunctional Family, Everybody Loves Claire, Everything is Beautiful and Nothing Hurts, Fluff, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Light Angst, Mentions of PTSD, POV Multiple, Past Child Abuse, Past Drug Addiction, Patrick is Nice Because I Said So, Post-Canon, Recovery, Reginald Hargreeves' A+ Parenting, Therapy, There is a Plot Though I Promise, Three Years Later, Tooth-Rotting Fluff
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-29
Updated: 2019-10-01
Packaged: 2020-01-31 19:45:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 71,178
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18598156
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iguessyouregonnamissthepantyraid/pseuds/iguessyouregonnamissthepantyraid
Summary: A movie star and an eight-year-old walk into the Academy.What follows is a summer in which the Hargreeves eatfartoo much junk food, build absurdly large blanket forts, make a few minor life-changing discoveries, and learn they might not be as bad at this whole "family" thing as they once thought.





	1. home sweet home

**Author's Note:**

> can i offer you a non-angsty* umbrella academy fic in this trying time?
> 
> (*okay maybe SOME angst in later chapters, but for every ounce of hurt these babies are getting a pound of comfort i promise)
> 
> my goal here is to keep everyone in character, bearing in mind that they've had 3 years to address their cornucopia of issues, grow a little and change a little, etc. etc. but like, it's still _them._ also note: there won't be any ships in this, except for mentions of past ships (i.e. five/dolores, diego/patch, klaus/dave) because i wanted to stick to the main theme of like, moving on and letting go of the past, so... yeah. enjoy!

 

_May 30th, 2022_

 

It takes three years.

Three years of once-a-week therapy and piles upon piles of self help books, of mandated counseling sessions and court appearances, of slowly being allowed access back into PTA meetings and soccer practices and dance recitals. Three years of maintaining the bare minimum of an acting career, three years of taking part in some of the lower risk Umbrella Academy missions that her siblings have picked back up, three years of reporting back to her therapist that she’s doing something constructive and meaningful with her abilities. Three years of absolutely relentless jet lag.

It takes three years, but the hard work finally, _finally_ pays off.

Three years culminate in three little words stamped onto a court order in the mail:

_ PARTIAL CUSTODY GRANTED.  _

Patrick is there when she receives it. Of course he must have known it was coming; he’d have had to sign off on it to make the whole thing official, and he’s been watching dutifully from the sidelines all this time as Allison’s pushed and pushed and pushed to get better, to _be_ better, for their daughter. It started off as an uneasy sort of alliance between them, an extension of… maybe not so much his _faith_ that Allison could fix herself, but perhaps at least the _hope_ that she could, for Claire’s sake. And what started as an uneasy alliance has, over the past three years, gently settled into something of a real friendship, one that Allison is not entirely sure she could have managed any of this without.

She opens up the court order and immediately dissolves into tears, and Patrick holds her through it, rubbing her back as she cries and all but crushes the paper in her fist.

“You earned this,” Patrick murmurs, and she can hear the earnestness in his voice. He’d never wanted his daughter to have to live without her mother, of _course_ he hadn’t, and God, Allison can’t believe she let things get so out of hand that he’d ever had to make that choice.

“You earned this,” he repeats. “I am so proud of you.”

 

 

That night, Allison sits herself down at the head of Claire’s bed, lightly running her fingers over her baby girl’s hair as she falls asleep, and somehow, she works up the nerve to ask Claire if she’d like to spend the next few weeks in the big mansion with her mommy and her aunt and her uncles and her grandma, instead of the usual once-in-a-blue-moon weekend trips.

“Like a vacation?” Claire asks.

“Exactly like a vacation, peanut,” Allison says. “But only if you want to.”

Claire burrows herself deeper into her small hoard of pillows, pulling her comforter all the way up to her neck, and she sleepily asks, “Will Nana make me those smiley face eggs for breakfast?”

“Oh, I’m sure she will, every day if you want.”

“Hmm,” Claire hums, like she’s _really_ thinking it over, even with her eyes closed and looking seconds away from falling asleep. “Will Uncle Klaus make a blanket fort with me again?”

Allison scoffs. _“Pff,_ are you kidding? Of course he will.”

Claire gives a sleepy little smile, her eyes still closed, and Allison swears her heart feels a million times lighter when her little girl mumbles, “Okay, Mommy, that sounds fun. I wanna go.”

 

 

———

 

  _June 2nd, 2022_  

 

The grogginess of a long and restless red eye has Allison’s brain feeling like mush, the familiar headache of sleeplessness pinging like a bell chime behind her right eye, her shoulders already sore from the two huge duffle bags she’s lugging up the front steps to the Academy, three more of their bags left behind at the bottom of the stairs that she is _not_ looking forward to coming back for.

But Claire is bouncing on her toes as she hops up the steps, wheeling her little suitcase behind her and excitedly recounting to Allison all her most _favorite_ things that happened in one of her comic books, and really, all the headaches and sore muscles in the world couldn’t bring down Allison’s mood right now.

She can’t be anything but ecstatic when her baby girl is this happy.

It feels like they’ve hardly crossed the threshold through those massive double doors, their feet just hitting the tile floor of the foyer, when a voice sounds from the living room.

“Uh oh,” Diego half-whispers. “You hear that, Five?”

Claire giggles and covers her mouth, immediately abandoning her suitcase in favor of shuffling behind Allison’s legs. She leans over, ducking down a bit to peer beneath one of the duffle bags at the living room doors.

There’s a sigh, then, and the sound of a page being flipped. Five answers, “I dunno, Diego. I think you’re imagining it. I didn’t hear anything.”

“Nah, I heard something for sure,” Diego says, just loud enough for his voice to carry into the foyer. “Could be an intruder. Think I better go sneak up on ‘em _real quiet,_ yeah? Gotta be sure the house is safe.”

The couch gives off a faint creak as he stands, and Claire grabs the back of Allison’s shirt at the waist. And Diego, as a general rule, is very adept at making his footsteps silent when he needs them to be. Allison knows this. _Everyone_ knows this.

That’s how Allison knows he’s purposely hitting every single squeaky floorboard on his way out of the living room, slowly and dramatically so they can trace his every step. Claire ducks further behind her when Diego finally comes into view, walking on the balls of his feet with his shoulders hunched, his narrowed eyes sweeping around the foyer.

“Oh yeah, definitely smells like trouble,” he says. “Allison, you seen any suspicious movement out here?”

Allison gives as much of a shrug as she can with the two duffle bags still weighing her down. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Diego.”

He squints suspiciously at her, though the effect is a little ruined by the smirk on his face, and then he shakes his head.

“Nah, I know there’s gotta be a troublemaker around here somewhere. I can smell it,” he says, “but I wonder…”

He inches a little closer to where they're standing.

“… where…”

He takes another few steps, creeping around to Allison’s right.

“… they could _be!”_

That’s all the warning Claire gets before her uncle dives in a tight circle around Allison, ducking down to throw an arm around Claire’s waist and scoop her up into the air.

“GOTCHA!”

Allison nearly topples over when he knocks into one of the duffel bags, but she regains her balance just in time to watch Claire let out a high-pitched squeal and wrap her arms tight around Diego’s neck. He spins her around and around, spinning until she’s red in the face from giggling and yelling, spinning until _he’s_ a little red in the face, too, either from laughing or from dizziness or from the exertion of holding up an eight-year-old for that long. Probably a bit of all three.

In the few seconds it takes Diego to slow to a stop, Five has already teleported out onto the front steps, teleported the rest of Claire’s and Allison’s luggage into the foyer, and had enough time to lean back against the wall beside the living room doors like he’s been standing there this whole time, arms crossed over his chest.

 _“Oh,_ Claire, it’s just you,” Diego says, a little breathless as he sets her down. “My bad, kid. Thought you might’ve been a bad guy.”

“Nuh-uh,” Claire says, rolling her eyes. “You knew it was me.”

“I did not.”

“Did too.”

“Did not.”

“Yuh- _huh!”_

“Nuh- _uh.”_

Allison clears her throat, because she knows from experience that _this_ particular back-and-forth is never going to end otherwise, and the two of them turn toward her.

It’s then that Claire notices that Diego isn’t the only one of her uncles that’s come to greet them, and her eyes go straight past Allison to lock onto her Uncle Five — her Uncle Five who’s been watching them with only the slightest hint of bemusement on his face, one eyebrow raised and his fingers drumming on his upper arm. Claire wastes absolutely no time in barrelling across the foyer to throw her arms around his middle.

“Hi, Uncle Five!”

Five lets out a little, _“Oof,”_ as Claire knocks the wind out of him, and he freezes for half a second, blinking wide eyes down at the top of her head.

And Allison knows, in the years since they averted the end of the world — the _Notpocalypse_ as Luther has taken to calling it, or the _Apocawasn’t_ if you asked Klaus — that her littlest but oldest brother has been slowly acclimating to life around other people, a life where real human contact is a common occurrence and where the Apocalypse no longer looms over him every second of every day. Each time Allison visits, she sees him smile just a bit more often, and sometimes, in rare little precious moments, one of those smiles will actually reach his eyes.

This is one of those moments.

His shoulders relax. He uncrosses his arms so that he can drop a hand on top of his niece’s head, the corners of his eyes crinkling a bit as he smiles down at her. “Hey, Claire.”

Claire extricates herself from her uncle’s waist, stepping back and bouncing on her toes again. “Is Auntie Vanya here? Is Uncle Luther here? What about Uncle Klaus and Uncle Ben?” Then she gasps and adds, “Oh! Is Nana here? I’m really hungry, can she make me some smiley face eggs?”

“Claire,” Allison cuts in before Five can decide on which question to answer first. “Everyone’s home, but it’s still early, peanut. They’re probably still asleep. Besides, the first thing we need to do is get our bags upstairs, and then—”

She’s interrupted, though, by a loud and theatrical gasp from the stairs, and Allison closes her eyes and lets out a sigh.

Damn it. She’s never getting up to her bedroom, is she?

“Ooh, what is _that?”_ Klaus cries out as he strides into view at the top of the first flight of stairs. He hops up onto the handrail and slides down it toward them, his feathery robe billowing out behind him like a cape, and when his bare feet hit the tile floor he’s already got his arms flung out in anticipation of a hug.

“UNCLE KLAUS!” Claire screams as she runs straight toward him and nearly knocks him over.

“I _thought_ that was the cutest kid in the whole world I heard down here!” Klaus says, bending down to hug her back just as fiercely, and then he adds, with a mocking little bow of his head in Five’s direction, “Oh, no offense, brother dearest, you know you’re a close second.”

He leans back and lifts Claire off her feet with a grunt of effort — effectively cutting off her view of everyone else so she doesn’t see her Uncle Five mouthing a _fuck off_ at Klaus from behind her back — and he sets her down half a second later. 

 _“Yeesh,_ you’re growing like a weed, huh? Look at you! What are you, six, seven feet tall now?”

Claire giggles. “I’m four feet and seven inches.”

Diego lets out a whistle and mutters, “Like mother like daughter, huh?”

Klaus continues, “You gotta stop growing so fast, you’re breaking your poor old uncle’s heart.” He lets out a watery little sigh, placing his hand on his chest and blinking away fake tears, which only makes Claire giggle more before he straightens up and smiles all over again. “Oh, and hey, Uncle Ben says hi, too! I just need to wake up a little more before I’m up for the whole manifesting gig. Tummy’s rumbling, too. What do you say, you hungry?”

“Yeah!”

Allison sighs again, finally dropping the duffel bags to the floor and rubbing out a kink in her neck.

So much for unpacking and getting a shower. She can hear, somewhere above, the sound of a bed creaking. That can only be Luther, waking up because of all the noise they’ve been making, and if the noise is enough to wake Luther, it’s got to be _plenty_ to wake Vanya, who can hear a pin drop from halfway across town when she really puts her mind to it.

It’s only a matter of time before the whole family’s here, and Allison is savvy enough to know when it’s time to accept defeat.

“Alright, you win, Claire. Breakfast first,” she relents. Then she raises a finger at her daughter and adds, “But right after, we’re gonna unpack and clean ourselves up. Sound like a deal?”

“Deal!” Klaus shouts at the same time that Claire answers an enthusiastic, “Okay, Mom!” and the two of them turn away and start sprinting together toward the kitchen in a whirlwind of laughter and shouts. Five rolls his eyes, but there’s a remnant of that genuine smile still on his face as he disappears in a ripple of blue — and reappears with a _crash_ down in the kitchen and a startled shout from Klaus half a second later.

“This place is about to get a whole hell of a lot louder, isn’t it,” Diego says, partly to himself and partly to her, staring off in the general direction of where the other three have disappeared to.

Then he shrugs as if to say, _Ah, well, what are you gonna do,_ and he lets out a sigh as he bends over to heft up one of the duffel bags up onto his shoulder. He slings his free arm around Allison, squeezing her to his side in a one-armed hug, almost like it’s an afterthought.

“Partial custody, huh,” he says, in a low murmur meant for only her to hear, like they’re not the only ones left in earshot anyway. “Told you you’d get there, didn’t I?”

Allison nods, a lump rising to her throat at the mention of it, and even though she knows the hug is only meant to be a passing thing, she turns and winds her arms tight around Diego’s waist, pressing her cheek into the dip between his shoulder and collarbone. Even from all the way in the kitchen she can hear Klaus and Claire laughing, but she feels rather than hears Diego chuckle as he rubs his hand up and down her arm.

“Yeah, I did. Proud of you, sis.”

 

 

Breakfast is a loud, disordered frenzy, and Allison would have expected nothing less.

Mom flits around the room, all smiles as she sets about cooking enough eggs and bacon and toast and pancakes to feed a small army, as she always does. Klaus chugs a full mug of scalding hot tea and slams it down onto the table with his fingertips already glowing blue, and Ben starts flickering into existence in the chair beside him so that Claire, sitting on his other side, can start talking Ben’s ear off about all the books she’s read since she last saw him. Vanya, still evidently half asleep, greets Claire with a loose hug and a kiss on the top of her head before she beelines for the coffee. Luther gives Claire a sleepy smile as he enters the kitchen, murmuring a little, _Hey there, munchkin,_ and ruffling her hair as he passes behind her. His jaw cracks with a yawn, and he starts wordlessly opening up cabinets to help Mom out with the cooking, handing off supplies from the higher shelves down to an equally quiet Vanya, who then hands them off to Mom. Allison and Diego, meanwhile, weave around all of them to grab plates and silverware and set them out.

And Five, sitting in the middle seat directly across from the trio of Klaus-Ben-Claire, gives Allison the uncanny impression of a point of calm at the center of a hurricane. He leans over a cup of steaming coffee and squints at the newspaper laid out in front of him, ignoring all of them with the practiced ease of a man in his sixties who’s lived the last three years surrounded by some of the loudest siblings on the face of the Earth.

It’s not until the table’s nearly set and the toaster dings that Luther utters the first words he’s spoken in a full ten minutes.

“Hey, are we out of peanut butter again?”

Allison raises an eyebrow at him as she places the last plate in front of her own seat, because really, peanut butter? For breakfast?

“And _then,”_ Claire continues to Ben and Klaus, “the wizard _exploded the whole castle—”_

“No way,” Klaus breathes, leaning his chin on both hands, at the same time that Ben asks a disbelieving, _“Whaaat?”_

In response to Luther, Five doesn’t look up from his newspaper, but he gives a hum of agreement and adds, “We’re out of marshmallows, too.”

Luther lets out a sigh and shuts the cabinet, leaving the barest crack of it still open; he always overcompensates when he’s trying to be gentle. He scratches the back of his head and says, “I could have sworn I bought the jumbo sized jar this time.”

Klaus glances up from Claire’s story and says, “That you did, big guy!”

“Then how…?”

“Because this one,” Klaus says, stretching across the table to ruffle Five’s hair and yanking his hand away with lightning speed to avoid Five’s slap, “is tearing through food like it’s nobody’s _business,_ that’s how.”

Vanya raises an eyebrow at him, cradling her coffee mug in both hands. “Come on, Klaus, he definitely didn’t finish a thirty-two ounce jar in a few days. Right, Five?”

Allison watches as Five keeps his eyes down on the newspaper, sipping at his coffee, and that’s enough answer for all of them.

“Seriously?” Luther asks, sounding more impressed than upset. His eyes are wide, a faint grimace on his face like he’s imagining the kind of stomachache he’d get from that. “Thirty-two ounces? In three days?”

Five still doesn’t look up. “It’s been four days, actually.”

Diego, taking the liberty of digging into the buffet that he and Mom have just finished setting out, scoops a massive pile of scrambled eggs onto his plate and says, “Still, that’s what, five thousand calories in peanut butter alone?”

“Sixty-five hundred, if we’re being technical.”

Diego lets out a low, impressed whistle. “You’re gonna make yourself sick, old man.”

Five bites back a yawn, flips a page in his newspaper, and he shrugs. “I’m always hungry. Side effect of the teenage body, I guess.”

“Ooh, yeah, I remember what that was like,” Diego says wistfully through a mouthful of eggs. “Used to wipe out the whole fridge every week, right Mom?”

 _“Used_ to,” Allison says, raising her eyebrows at Vanya and earning a sleepy little smile.

“Yes, you did, dear,” Mom answers, sliding another plate of pancakes onto the table.

“Well, I guess nowadays there’s no better place than here for a couple of growing kids,” Diego adds with a nod in Claire’s direction. “Never gonna go hungry when Mom’s around, that’s for sure.”

Klaus chimes in, “Even if you  _are_ scarfing down elephant quantities of P.B.”

Five shrugs again. “True,” he says, taking another sip of coffee. “It _is_ inconvenient, but so is pretty much everything about the age regression, so whatever.”

“Hey,” Klaus says, leaning forward on his elbows to point at Five with his fork. “You keep on complaining, but wait ‘til we’re all gray and wrinkled and you’re still looking like you’re _this_ age,” he says, waving the fork in a circle at his own face, “all young and _dapper_ and still in your thirties while we’re forced to check poor old decrepit Luther into a nursing home—”

“Hey!”

“— and then we’ll see who’s complaining,” Klaus finishes, ignoring both Luther’s protest and Diego’s snorting laugh.

“Yeah, well, for your information,” Five says as he finally stands up, leaning across the table to slide a few pancakes onto his own plate, “I actually _liked_ my gray hair. I kind of miss it. The mustache, too.”

Allison chokes on a sip of her orange juice. Diego drops his fork.

“Stop,” Klaus says, a smile growing on his face.

Vanya’s jaw hangs open, and she asks, “The _what?”_

Five pauses halfway through reaching for the syrup, and he sweeps a confused look over everyone at the table. “The… mustache? Why?”

Diego asks, “How in the hell have you not mentioned that until now?”

“What did it look like?” Claire asks, finally distracted away from the story she’s been telling to her Uncle Ben.

“Uh… gray,” Five answers Claire, shaking his head and returning to the task of pouring syrup over his plate. “Like the rest of me. Seriously, guys, how is that so weird? I’m a sixty-one-year-old _time traveling assassin,_ I lived in a literal Apocalypse—”

“Armageddidn’t—”

“— and I’m stuck in a sixteen-year-old’s body,” Five goes on like Ben hadn’t interrupted at all. “And you’re all that surprised by the fact that I had some facial hair?”

“But why a _mustache?”_

Five throws his hands in the air. “Because I looked good with a mustache, Klaus!”

 _“No one_ looks good with a mustache!”

“You have a mustache, ass—” Five starts to say, glances at Claire, and corrects himself. “Idiot.”

“Yeah, with a goatee, though. There’s a huge difference there, bro—”

“There is _not—!”_

And the whole table, predictably, dissolves into an indistinct cacophony of bickering.

Luther comes to Five’s defense, saying something like _mustaches aren’t that bad, come on, guys,_ while Vanya gives a little shrug and a wince that means she definitely agrees with Klaus, and Diego says something about letting the old man make his own horrible cosmetic mistakes if he wants to, and Five argues loudly that none of them know what the hell they’re talking about, and Mom smiles at all of them and asks if she should make more pancakes. Ben leans his chin on his hand with his elbow not quite touching the table, looking down with a smile at Claire as she forgets all about the argument happening around them and picks her story right back up.

“I’m only on chapter twelve so far—”

“Oh, you kidding? Chapter thirteen’s where the good part starts, did you bring it with you?”

“Yeah, and —”

“— for the last time, Klaus, I’m not taking fashion advice from someone wearing _feathers_ —”

“— are very fashionable, how dare you —”

“— guys, really, come on —”

“— just ‘cause the old geezer doesn’t —”

“— you look like a giant lanky _bird_ —”

Allison sighs and leans back in her seat, and as she glances toward Claire she catches Ben’s eye over her daughter’s head.

“Home sweet home, huh?” Ben asks.

“Yeah,” Allison agrees, unable to hold back a smile, and she lifts her orange juice in a little mock toast that only he notices. “Home sweet home.”

 


	2. scatterbrained

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A quick glimpse into the early post-Notpocalypse days, a present-day therapy session with everyone's favorite (retired) time-traveling assassin, and some peanut butter & marshmallow sandwiches.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me? spending 6000 words on five introspection? it's more likely than you think!
> 
> anyway. who's ready to see this old geezer go to therapy

 

_May 29th, 2019_

 

It’s been eight weeks and two days.

Eight weeks and two days since the world, and every ounce of life on it, was supposed to grind to a screeching halt. Everyone on Earth is now eight weeks and two days _older_ than they were ever destined to be. Klaus and Allison and Diego and Luther are all eight weeks and two days older than they were when…

Well, _when._

Eight weeks, two days, and some change. Hours, minutes. He only stopped counting each passing second when he started to hear Dolores in his head, chastising him in that oh-so-concerned way that she does. Or, did. Would.

 _It’s over, you old dummy,_ he knows she’d say, with that sly smile of hers. _Can’t you see that? Relax a little, why don’t you?_

Eight weeks, two days, and some change. That’s how long it’s been, when Five stands on his bed on a rainy Wednesday morning in the midst of scratching new equations into the walls of his bedroom — contingency plans on top of contingency plans — and he’s interrupted by the clearing of a throat behind him.

He doesn’t pause in his writing. Luther can wait a second.

_Integrate and don’t forget to factor in the rate constant this time. Carry the x over…_

Luther clears his throat again, and Five rolls his eyes. He pivots away from the wall, turning the chalk over between his fingers, the last few digits he’s got left to write still buzzing at the back of his brain, and — oh.

It’s not just Luther. Just a few feet away is Vanya, too, looking smaller than ever with her arms lightly hugging her torso, absolutely dwarfed both by Five’s vantage point atop the bed and by Luther hovering behind her with his massive shoulders blocking up the whole doorway. Both of their eyes are set squarely on Five.

And he knows, immediately, why they’re here.

“I’m not going.”

“Oh, come on, Five.”

He turns away, ignoring Luther’s _wonderfully_ eloquent protest, and jots down the next few digits while he still remembers them. Then he answers the next question that he knows is coming, because his siblings are nothing if not predictable.

“I’m not going because it’s not necessary,” Five tells them both over his shoulder. “There’s no reason for it.”

Luther huffs. “We’re concerned, Five. Isn’t that reason enough?”

“It absolutely is not,” he answers without hesitation, not turning around.

“But—”

“I know you all keep forgetting this,” Five cuts him off, “but I’m not a child. I’m nearly twice as old as any of you. I know what I need, and that’s not it.”

“So, this is what you need?” Luther asks. His voice remains perfectly level, perfectly gentle, and Five rolls his eyes even though neither of them can see it. “This isn’t healthy, Five. It’s obsessive. You’re fixating.”

“Ooh, big words.”

“Don’t be—”

“Look, _Number One,”_ Five cuts him off again, spinning around to point at Luther with his chalk. “The fact that sitting around in a sterile little office and spilling all your daddy issues on a stranger has helped _you_ does not mean that I’m now obligated to do the same thing. I’m the only person in this entire house that’s even remotely well-adjusted. After all, it wasn’t—”

He very nearly finishes the sentence, but he wisely stops himself, snapping his jaw shut against the words building up in his throat.

Because yes, it wasn’t his issues that culminated in Texas-sized meteors raining down from the sky, it was _theirs,_ but saying as much in front of Vanya feels… unnecessarily cruel. He’s at least got the presence of mind enough to recognize that.

“It’s not needed,” he says instead. “And anyway, as you can see, I’m busy.”

“Busy defacing every wall in your room?”

“Oh, shut _up,_ Luther—”

“Please, Five?” Vanya finally speaks up, a tiny little sound that effectively expels all the anger from him like air from a popped balloon. He looks to her, watching as she fidgets and tugs at the ends of her sleeves, nervously pulling them over her hands. She already looks _so_ guilty for injecting her voice into the conversation at all, for having as much as two little words to say in the face of Luther’s and Five’s multitudes.

From the fact that she spoke up at all, and from the way Luther is looking at her now — all soft and hesitant and a little bit proud — Five knows immediately that this whole thing was her idea. It only makes sense. Misplaced guilt drove her here, and misplaced guilt drove Luther to her side in a show of support.

They’re all just a big pack of guilt-driven morons. Every last one of them.

“Just once,” Vanya adds, still so, so quiet. “Please?”

And… damn it.

 _Damn_ it.

Five runs his free hand over his face. Then he lets out a long-suffering sigh, tosses the chalk toward the back corner of his room, and hops off the bed.

Just once. That he can do, if only to wipe that look off his little sister’s face.

“You guys always stop at Griddy’s on the way, right?”

Vanya’s face turns so heartbreakingly ecstatic and _hopeful_ that Five has to look away from her — Jesus, it should _not_ be that easy to make her smile like that — and he directs his attention to Luther instead, whose smug little half-smile is almost worse.

Luther answers with a single nod.

“Twenty-four ounce black coffee, no sugar,” Five tells them, looking away from the both of them and stepping around Vanya to get to his wardrobe. “And none of that light roast bullshit, either. I’ll get dressed and meet you at Griddy’s, and then I will go with you to entertain this asinine idea _one_ single time.”

“Thanks, Five,” Luther says. “It really—”

“Black. No sugar. Twenty-four ounces. Go.”

 

 

Five hates the first therapist. _Hates_ him, the second he walks in, but he grits his teeth and plows through the session anyway with only the occasional snide remark, because if he doesn’t, he knows his siblings will accuse him of _not trying, Five, you didn’t even give him a chance, Five._

Of course they all accuse him of not trying anyway, so all that effort ends up being for nothing. He should have blinked out of the room as soon as the idiot opened his mouth.

Vanya convinces him to try again the following week with someone new. She says something about it not being an exact science, which — yeah, no shit — but he acquiesces once again to that kicked-puppy look of hers, and he tries.

The second therapist is nice enough, but he calls Five _kiddo._ So that one’s out.

The third seems to accept the whole “fifty-eight-years old” thing without batting an eye. She _seems_ to, but there’s something about the way she speaks to him, the way she regards him, that says she still looks at him and sees a kid, and that makes his fucking skin crawl. He ducks out of that one in the first fifteen minutes.

The fourth therapist wastes no time in trying to do exactly what his siblings have been trying to do for weeks. He tries to convince Five to let go of the equations, the plotting, the contingency plans. Five does not have time for someone who won’t take him seriously, he doesn’t have time to listen to someone who doesn’t _get it,_ and he certainly isn’t about to pay for a lecture that he can get just fine, _verbatim,_ in the relative comfort of his own home, thank you very much.

The fifth is a moron. A complete and utter moron. Five tells his siblings as much, and they accuse him, once again, of seeking out any imperfections he can, of being too picky, of not _trying._

It’s the only reason he agrees to a sixth. Just to prove them wrong.

And the sixth therapist, Vanya decides in a sudden stroke of inspiration, will be her own. She books him an hour-long appointment in the slot right before hers, drives with him to the office, and tells him she’ll sit in the waiting room with her coffee and a novel while she waits for his appointment to end and for hers to begin.

She also tells him, with her eyes as soft as ever and with that ever-present shadow of apprehension in them, that if he doesn’t like this one she won’t be upset. She tells him that she appreciates how much he’s been trying.

What she _doesn’t_ tell him is that she knows he’s doing this almost entirely for her sake.

But really, she doesn’t need to.

 

 

Dr. Maria Sanchez is not much different from the others, not at first pass. She’s got the same prim and proper air to her, the same perfect posture, the same sort of open kindness in her eyes that some of the others had — the sort of genuine open kindness that _shouldn’t_ send an uncomfortable itch up his spine, but it always does.

Still, he tells himself, this is the woman who helped Vanya through her self esteem issues over the years. This woman, with her thick-rimmed glasses and the crows feet crinkling at the corners of those kind eyes, kept Vanya afloat when her depressive episodes threatened to pull her under. This woman worked to help Vanya undo the years of psychological damage purposefully inflicted upon her by Dad, and unwittingly inflicted upon her by the rest of their siblings.

This woman looked out for Vanya when everyone else wouldn’t. When Five _couldn’t._

And for that alone, he supposes she deserves a chance.

One of the first things she asks him is, “Why don’t you tell me about yourself, Mr. Hargreeves?”

Five raises an eyebrow, slouching back against the couch and drumming his fingers on the to-go cup of coffee sitting between his legs. “Vanya’s been seeing you more or less consistently for over a decade. I’d imagine you already know quite a bit about me.”

“I know someone else’s perception of you,” she corrects him without hesitation. “I know what news featurettes from seventeen years ago have said about you. And even that’s lacking, isn’t it? The Number Five of my knowledge was a thirteen-year-old boy, which we both know you’re not. He was young and… let’s say _proud—”_

“Arrogant,” Five interjects, because he can tell that’s what she means, and because it’s true. “Hubristic.”

She inclines her head with the sort of mischievous quirk of her lips that says, _Your words, not mine,_ and she opens her hands toward him. “That’s all I have. A thirteen-year-old boy who disappeared when Vanya was young. According to the birth date you listed, you’re nearly _thirty,_ but that’s not true either, is it?”

“Fifty-eight.” He shrugs one shoulder. “Give or take.”

“Give or take? You don’t know for sure?”

It’s telling, he thinks, that she breezes right past the _fifty-eight_ and latches onto the _give or take,_ like that’s somehow the stranger of the two things he’s just said to her. Telling, and a little bit refreshing.

“I’m… reasonably certain,” he admits. “It was difficult to know for sure. How much has Vanya told you about where I disappeared to?”

Dr. Maria Sanchez opens her mouth, then closes it and mulls over her words. She taps her pen against the clipboard in her lap.

Five has to admit he likes that, the hesitance upon being asked about Vanya. It’s why he asked in the first place.

“How about we presume,” she says at length, “that I know nothing about where you disappeared to. Let’s presume I have no prior knowledge outside of” — she waves a hand noncommittally, a vague swirl in the air — “public domain, what _everyone_ knows about the Umbrella Academy. All of your abilities, your mysterious disappearance, and nothing else. But let’s also presume that I’ll take anything you tell me at face value. I won’t dismiss anything you say as too outlandish to be true.”

The pen twirls between her fingers, and then she tucks it into the top of her clipboard and sets the whole thing on the desk behind her. She crosses one leg over the other and laces her fingers together over her knee, eyeing him down over the rim of her glasses with those kind brown eyes.

“Then, Mr. Hargreeves, I’ll ask again: Why don’t you tell me about yourself?”

 

 

“How’d it go?” Vanya asks on the drive home.

Five chews on his cheek, rapping his thumb against the top of the steering wheel and staring more _through_ the traffic than _at_ it.

Dr. Sanchez did, in fact, take everything he said at face value. He mostly chalked that up to her time spent talking to Vanya over the years, and especially over these past few weeks. How strange is a time-traveler, after all, stacked against a woman who can channel sound into a force liable to detonate astronomical bodies? How hard is it to believe that he’s fifty-eight years old, really, when his siblings can alter reality with a few words and bench press cars and talk to the _dead?_

So she believed every word he told her. Or she appeared to. Hell, she may even have heard the whole story already; Five gave her the very same, watered down, sanitized and scrubbed timeline of events that he’s given to all of his siblings. Forty-five years packed into a few clipped sentences. A brief description of the time he spent under the Commission. Nothing too graphic, but enough for imagination to fill the blanks — the words _contract killer,_ in his eyes, have always said plenty.

She didn’t question any of it, which is mildly impressive.

She also didn’t… comment, either, which is more impressive. Not when he brought up Dolores in passing, not when he purposely went a little too in depth on the physics jargon, not when he very heavily implied that he’s killed more people than she’s ever even _known,_ not when he told her about his newest equations scratched in chalk on his bedroom walls, not when he insisted that the job would never be done until he could be absolutely one-hundred-percent certain that the Commission was fully out of the picture.

She took everything he said, and she offered exactly one single bit of advice for him to take with him.

“Five?”

He sighs. Vanya already knows he agreed to a second session with Dr. Sanchez, which is leaps and bounds more than any of the previous therapists managed to achieve, so he doesn’t bother answering her question.

Instead, he asks his own.

“Do you know where I can buy chalkboard paint?”

 

 

———

 

_Present Day_

_June 3rd, 2022_

 

“I think…”

Five cuts his own voice off. Lets the air build up in his lungs and then _woosh_ out all at once. Tips his head against the back of the couch to stare up at the popcorn ceiling.

How is he supposed to word it? He laces his fingers over his stomach, twiddling his thumbs.

Finally he settles with, “Time isn’t… linear.”

“You think time isn’t linear?”

He lifts his head from the couch and shoots a look at Maria, arches an eyebrow. “Oh,” he realizes, shaking his head and tipping it back again. “No, sorry. I was backtracking. I _know_ time isn’t linear. That’s a fact. It doesn’t just progress from Point A to Point B to Point C. It’s — _malleable._ You can mold it and shape it and poke and prod at the timestream.” He shrugs one shoulder. “To an extent, anyway.”

Again his voice trails off, but Maria doesn’t take advantage of his silence to interject.

She knows when he still has something to say. She always does.

“It’s just… I know time isn’t linear. Objectively, I know it’s not.” Then, waving a hand over himself in demonstration — all five-foot-something of him, gangly and baby-faced and just coming off a growth spurt at the ripe old age of _sixty-one_ — he adds, “I mean, if anyone should know that, it’s me.”

He doesn’t quite succeed in barring the note of bitterness from his voice. Maria, thankfully, doesn’t comment on it.

“But somehow, when I think back on — you know, my life,” Five continues, tracing his eyes over barely-there patterns in the ceiling, “I still think of it in linear time. I can’t help… slicing it up? My mind just carves all those years into sections. There’s the thirteen years at the Academy, cut off because I was too arrogant to—”

“Five…”

“I know, I know, negative language. Reflex,” Five says with a sigh, running a hand over his face. He’s working on it. “And anyway, that’s not the point. It’s… It’s thirteen years at the Academy, right? Then forty-five years, give or take, in the Apocalypse. An indeterminate amount of time working for the Commission, my best guess being about a year. Then the time I spent fighting to stop the Apocalypse from happening, and then…”

He gulps.

“Then, this. It was three years this past April, you know.”

Maria nods. He sees it just at the bottom edge of his peripheral. “I know.”

“Three years of… normalcy?” He shrugs. The ceiling has little flecks of paint on it, dark against the white, like an inverted night sky. “Or as close to normalcy as anyone in that house is ever gonna get, anyway. Birthday parties, and bowling nights, and concertos, and midnight diner trips. It’s been three years of just… _living._ Right after, you know, forty-five years of—”

His voice catches.

Forty-five years of desperation, of bone-deep aching loneliness, of numbers and variables and single-minded obsession and _anger._

“Surviving,” Maria fills in for him, her voice soft.

Five takes a slow breath, and whatever traitorous thing that had blocked up his throat starts to shrink away. Then, because that’s as good as any other way to put it, he says, “Yeah. Forty-five years of surviving. Three years of living. A brief stint of contract killing in the interim.”

That’s how he sees it, in his mind. It’s a timeline, drawn out like a child would see it, from the beginning of his life until now. A long unbroken pencil line of his life spent in the Apocalypse. A little stretch of still-growing time that he spends with his family, getting to know them again, trying to move on, the pencil slowly ticking its way along its path as time goes by.

A little splotch of angry, bright red in between. A streak of paint breaking up the graphite.

He still doesn’t like to dwell on that bit.

“That’s only natural,” Maria tells him. “I know you’ve seen the inner workings of how time _actually_ works, Five, but the human mind processes time linearly, no matter how the most advanced physics might say otherwise. And however clever and experienced and well-studied your mind might be, it’s still a _human_ mind.”

Five chews on his cheek.

“I know,” he admits. “But you know what else occurred to me, Maria?”

“What?”

“I’m sixteen years old,” he says. “Physically. I’m aging at a normal rate, like all those decades never happened.”

All his scars, calluses, everything, wiped out in one time jump. He’s had to go through puberty all over again, though at least he’s been aging at _all_ and hasn’t been stuck at thirteen forever. At least he hasn’t aged ten times faster, jettisoning to an early old-age death. Because either of those outcomes — and a whole host of others — had certainly been possible, for all he’d known.

He shakes the thought away.

“I’m… _young,_ for all intents and purposes,” he continues. “My entire life expectancy has essentially nearly doubled, I mean, assuming there are no complications from my consciousness being in its sixties, and ruling out any major health effects from all the time jumps. So, in all likelihood, my body could end up living to a normal old age, and my consciousness will be well into the _hundreds.”_

Again Maria nods. “And that makes you uncomfortable.”

 _“Jesus,_ it’s scary how well you do that,” Five tells her, not for the first time, his voice low and annoyed. “Yeah, it makes me uncomfortable.”

He pauses. Maria waits.

“Forty-five years. And you know, the worst part of it, sometimes, was how fast it went by? That sounds crazy, right? It should’ve been better that way, but…”

His voice trails off again. He hates thinking about this, absolutely _hates_ it, but he can’t explain it any other way. And he knows, from experience, that he’ll never work past this if he doesn’t say it aloud.

It’s why he’d always needed Dolores. It’s what keeps him coming back to these sessions with Maria.

“But when my thirtieth birthday hit,” he presses on, “I knew that I was older than any of my brothers or sisters ever got to be in that timeline, and I realized… I could barely remember what they looked like. It had only been seventeen years at that point, and it had gone by _so quickly,_ but I couldn’t… I already couldn’t picture them. I mean, I had little things. Feelings. Memories of things they’d said, things they’d done, back when we were kids. And I had Vanya’s picture in her book, and a blurry picture of Allison from an old magazine. But—”

 _Again_ his voice catches, and he brings both hands up to scrub over his face.

“I don’t know. I just keep thinking… There’s gonna be a time when I don’t really remember the Apocalypse, either, isn’t there? I won’t forget all of it, obviously, but I won’t _remember,_ either. Not just yet, but… eventually.”

Maria nods.

Then, softly, she asks, “Why does that bother you so much?”

“Because — because I _shouldn’t_ forget it,” Five argues, dropping his hands into his lap. “I don’t—” _I don’t deserve to forget it,_ he almost says aloud, then course corrects. “The time I spent there is what made me _me._ I never wanted to make a life there for myself, but I _did,_ and it…”

He chews on his cheek, searching the ceiling for answers that won’t come. The wind in his sails dies out. He sags deeper into the couch.

“I don’t know,” he admits. “I don’t know what I’m saying.”

Maria waits a moment. The edges of Five’s peripheral have been getting hazy, the corners of his eyes stinging, but he still sees her tuck her pencil into the top of her clipboard and set the whole thing aside onto her desk, like she always does when she’s about to tell him something Important-with-a-capital-I. He sees her leaning forward, elbows on her knees, hands clasped together.

“Five,” she says. “It makes perfect sense for you to feel defined by the time you spent in the Apocalypse. The vast majority of your life was spent there. It took over your life for _decades.”_

He lets out a long exhale through his nose, closes his eyes, and asks, “But?”

And he can practically _hear_ her smiling at that.

“But,” she agrees, “you’re right. You are very likely to live well into your hundreds. There will very likely be a time that you start to forget some of what you experienced in the Apocalypse, whether you want those memories to stick around or not. But Five, the way you’re thinking of it now, with the Apocalypse taking over the majority of your life… That’s not always going to be the case, is it? For the very same reason that you will eventually forget some of your time there, because you have so many decades ahead of you, there is _also_ going to be a time that the years you spent _there_ are vastly outnumbered by the years you’ve spent _here.”_

And —

Well. Shit. She couldn’t have more effectively knocked the breath from him if she tried.

“I don’t…” he tries to say, fails, and then tries again. “I don’t know how to feel about that.”

“You don’t have to,” Maria tells him. “You’re allowed to process these things on your own schedule. You know that.”

He does. Objectively. She only reminds him of that at least once every single time he comes to her office.

“I think what’s important now,” Maria continues, “is for you to… maybe not _accept,_ but at least _recognize_ that after everything you went through, and everything you did to get back here, that maybe you’ve been given a second chance at life. And that maybe, just maybe, you’ve been given it for a reason.”

Five makes a face, shooting a look at her. “I wasn’t _given_ it.”

“Well, I thought you might object to me saying you _earned_ it,” she answers with a wink, as unfazed by his attitude as she always is. “But my point still stands.”

She maintains eye contact, peering over the edge of her glasses, waiting for him. Because he knows exactly where she’s going with this, and _she_ knows that _he_ knows exactly where she’s going with this, and she’s not letting him off the hook by going ahead and laying it out for him without a little prodding.

He rolls his eyes and says to the ceiling, “Fine. I’ll bite. What’s the reason, then?”

And Maria’s answer is, surprisingly, not even close to what he’d been expecting.

“I don’t know.”

Five blinks at the ceiling, his brow creasing, and then he sits straight up for the first time since getting here, so he can level Maria with incredulous, narrowed eyes. _“What?_ What kind of an answer is that?”

“The truth,” Maria answers without hesitation. “I really don’t know. You’ve got to find the reason yourself, Five. I mean, you had one goal — just one — for nearly half a century, and you completed it. Don’t you think it might help your state of mind if you found something to do with this new life you’ve earned for yourself? Don’t you think it’d be a good idea to find _new_ goals to work toward?”

 

 

The conversation with Maria sticks to Five’s brain a little longer than their usual sessions do.

Which it shouldn’t. It _shouldn’t._

But it does. He thinks about it as he drives home. He turns it over in his head as he sheds his blazer by the front door and stalks off toward the kitchen. He runs through the words again as he fixes himself something to eat for a late dinner.

“It’s not like I’m not already doing anything with my life,” he mutters, digging the knife into the peanut butter jar.

Because he is. He’s doing plenty with his life. In fact, if you ask him he’s actually done a _phenomenal_ job of reorienting himself once the Apocalypse was averted.

So what if he spent the better part of a year afterward obsessively formulating contingency plans, jotting down equations on top of equations, planning for the inevitable moment that the Commission might come back for the Apocalypse or to exact revenge on him or on his family? So what if he still keeps a copy of some of the core equations for a backward time jump folded up in his inner coat pocket at all times, _just_ in case, just on the off chance something else goes wrong? So what if the smell of smoke still makes his muscles seize up? So what if the nightmares still come back every so often?

He closes the peanut butter jar a little tighter than strictly necessary, shoving it back into the cabinet.

So _what?_

The Apocalypse is over, it’s been over, his life’s goal has been completed for three years, and he has _more_ than successfully set himself toward new goals, thank you very much.

There’s been the training of Vanya’s abilities, for one. That’s been his top priority from the beginning, and Five’s been a damn _natural_ at it, explaining the physics behind her powers, how the vibrations of sound can resonate within her and transfer into a detonative force, how different frequencies can have different effects.

Helping Klaus with his powers, too, was a fun little task for a while there. Conjuring his dead boyfriend long enough for Klaus to get a proper goodbye had been — well, not _enjoyable,_ not really, and Five had kind of wished he hadn’t been there to witness it. But it was… gratifying, maybe, knowing he’d helped make that happen for Klaus.

Then there’s the Umbrella Academy missions, those few times that all of them have gathered together to take down a robbery, or diffuse a hostage situation, or whatever other disaster struck the city on any given day that ends with Y. It’s a good way to stretch out underused muscles, it’s good practice for Vanya, and it’s a good way for all of them to figure out how to work together again, how to be a _team_ again.

That’s the other thing he’s been trying to do, actually. Getting to _know_ them again, this bunch of idiots he calls a family. Making up for nearly five decades worth of lost time.

So _there._

Great advice, Maria, but he’s already got plenty of goals, _thanks._

“I mean, really,” he says under his breath, rolling his eyes as he rips open a fresh bag of marshmallows. “What else is there?”

“Hi, Uncle Five!”

Five jolts — almost jumps, almost blinks straight to the other side of the room, but he reins it in at the last second. Instead he only loses his hold on the marshmallow bag, sending a small flurry of them tumbling across the table as his heart rate fucking _skyrockets._

Claire walks around him, pulling out the chair closest to him and sitting down like she didn’t just startle him out of his wits.

“Uh — hey, Claire,” Five breathes, shaking his head and inwardly scolding himself as he starts using his hand to sweep some of the spilled marshmallows back into the bag. A renowned intertemporal assassin, the feared and widely respected Number Five Hargreeves, and he just allowed an _eight-year-old_ to catch him off guard.

Jesus, if the Handler could see him now.

Claire folds her forearms on the table and drops her cheek onto them, her eyes first focusing on his half-completed sandwich and then flicking up to his face.

She asks, “Why’re you scared?”

“Not scared,” he corrects. “Just startled. It’s not every day someone’s able to sneak up on me, you know.”

She smiles, nodding against her arms. “I’m really good at it. I scare Mommy all the time. It’s really funny.”

Five snorts. “Well, you take after your uncle in that respect, Claire,” he tells her, carefully pouring a fistful of marshmallows onto the first layer of his sandwich.

“Which one?”

Five opens his mouth, pauses for a beat, and then shrugs as he layers on another slice of bread and some more marshmallows. “All of them, I guess. But I was referring to this one.”

“Did you used to sneak up on Mommy, too?”

“I used to sneak up on all of my brothers and sisters. Still do, sometimes.”

He grabs his second pre-peanut-butter-coated slice of bread and carefully stacks it on top, forming the double decker version of his favorite sandwich — the version he’d started making as soon as his hormones started going haywire and his stomach started demanding twice the calories for half the satisfaction.

 _Oh, listen to you,_ he knows Dolores would say,  _at least this time you have the means to satisfy it at all._  And somewhere in the back of his mind he hears Maria prattling about _second chances,_ and he thinks, not for the first time, that Maria and Dolores would have gotten on like a house on fire.

He shakes the thought away.

“I was really good at it, too,” he tells Claire. “Just like you.”

Claire blows a raspberry, pouting a bit. “Well, _yeah,_ ‘cause you can teleport.”

“Hey, you scared me just fine without teleporting, didn’t you? Almost gave your poor old uncle a heart attack.”

“Nuh-uh,” she says, rolling her eyes, and then she pulls one forearm out from under her cheek, just long enough to poke at her own temple. “You’re only old up here. You can’t get a heart attack.”

As she refolds her arms, Five sets about cutting the sandwich into triangles, and he decides against correcting her that, technically, _anyone_ can have a heart attack, regardless of how young their body might be. No need to get her worried over nothing.

“Well,” he says, “if I could have, I would have. Doesn’t seem like you need teleporting to sneak up on people, does it?”

“Nah,” Claire agrees. “I _am_ really good at it. It’s easier when you get people distracted first, too.”

“Is that so?”

“Mm-hmm.”

Five blinks to the other side of the kitchen, pulling two plates from the cabinet, and he blinks back to the table to place two of the sandwich triangles on one plate and two on the other. He can always make another one later.

“Well, you’re in a house full of some of the most scatterbrained people on the planet, Claire,” Five says as he slides the second plate toward her. “So you’ve got your work cut out for you, I guess.”

She straightens up in her seat, eagerly grabbing one of the triangles. “What’s scatterbrained mean?”

“What’s it sound like?”

She hums thoughtfully through a mouthful of peanut butter and marshmallows, gulps it down, and guesses, “It means… your brain is all messed around? ‘Cause it’s not where it’s supposed to be? Like just now, you were all mad and stuff, so you weren’t thinking about the kitchen, so it was easy for me to sneak up on you.”

Five actively chooses not to dwell on the fact that he’d been so lost in thought that he’d let his eight-year-old niece catch onto his sour mood — he’ll just have to make a mental note to control that a little better in the future, that’s all — and he cracks a smile instead.

“Good job. That’s exactly what scatterbrained means.”

“Thanks,” she says, already chowing down on the second of her two sandwich triangles. “Hey, me and Uncle Klaus and Uncle Ben and Uncle Luther are gonna make a blanket fort while Mommy and Auntie Vanya are out. You wanna come?”

Five opens his mouth to answer, then pauses and narrows his eyes at her. “Are you inviting me because you’re hoping I’ll bring more sandwiches?”

Claire chews on her last bite slowly, watching him watching her, and she gulps, her lips pinched together in an obvious attempt not to smile. She shrugs.

“Maybe.”

His eyes narrow further, and he leans forward on his elbows and eyes her down with the sort of pointed stare that would make _most_ people start shaking in their boots, but not Claire. Not when it’s her Uncle Five.

After a moment he says, “I’ll tell you what, Claire. I’ll make you all the peanut butter marshmallow sandwiches you want, but you need to do me a favor first.”

“What kinda favor?”

“You go get your uncles nice and distracted for me,” Five tells her, ducking his head down and lowering his voice to a conspiratorial whisper, “so I can scare the _pants_ off of them. I’ll show you how a real professional does it.”

Claire’s eyes go wide, a smile spreading across her face, and hardly another second passes before she’s already scrambled off the chair, hurrying out of the kitchen — until, oddly, she skids to a halt just as she passes through the doorway and then pivots on the spot, sprinting back to the exact place she’d just left. She pushes her chair in, swipes her empty plate off the table, and runs in a wide circle around the perimeter of the kitchen to dump the plate into the sink on her way out, a whirlwind of hyperactive eight-year-old excitement only slightly hampered by the compulsive little kid need to be polite.

“UNCLE KLAUS!” he hears her scream from somewhere near the stairs, loud enough that the whole damn mansion is bound to hear it. “UNCLE LUTHER! UNCLE BEN!”

Five stays right where he is for a second, leaning against the table, unable to suppress a smile as he listens to Claire’s thumping footsteps up the stairs.

He can’t help it, really. His niece’s good moods tend to be contagious that way.

And besides, he thinks, he’d had no reason to get so worked up over a little advice from his therapist. He does that sometimes, he knows he does. Gets in his own head a little too much. Dolores always told him so — but really, for so many decades his head had been the only place to _be,_ so who could blame him?

He’s working on it. He’s _been_ working on it. He’s getting better every day.

For now, he’ll content himself with the goal in front of him: Take a seat and relax and enjoy the half of his sandwich that he didn’t give away, wait until Claire gets a good distraction going, and then scare the absolute _shit_ out of Klaus and Ben and Luther.

Yeah.  _That_ he can do with pleasure.


	3. no bedtimes on vacation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Diego does his job, visits an old friend, and crashes a blanket fort party.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [tom haverford voice] sometimes you gotta angst a little... so you can fluff a lot

_June 3rd, 2022_

 

These days, Diego isn’t exactly sure where he lives. Technically.

Depends on how you ask, really.

If you ask where he lives, _legally,_ it’s still the boiler room apartment in the back of the gym. It’s almost a formality at this point, a way to say, _yes, I’m still an adult with my own place, thanks,_ and it’s where his mail goes and where he showers after a workout and where he retreats to when his siblings are annoying the shit out of him. But it isn’t where he sleeps. The bed’s barely been touched for months now.

If you ask where he _does_ sleep, well, that answer changes just about every night, given that he’s never been a consistent sleeper a day in his life, and PI work and vigilantism aren’t exactly _nine to five_ kind of gigs. He catches a few winks in the car between jobs, passes out on his couch when he’s got time for a full six hours, crashes in his old bedroom at the Academy once or twice a week.

The Academy, though — if you ask where he spends most of his waking hours, if you ask where he thinks of when he thinks of _heading home,_ it’d probably be there.

And holy hell is that unexpected, or what? If anyone had told Diego, years ago, that he would ever willingly set foot in that place again, he’d have thought they had a few screws loose. If anyone had told him he’d be going there specifically for things like sitting in on training sessions for _Vanya_ of all people, or helping Luther with something as mundane as _housing renovations,_ he’d have driven them to a psych ward himself.

And if they had told him he’d also be doing it for the excuse to hang out with Klaus and Ben and Five, too… well, they’d have gotten a good punch to the jaw for bringing up the latter two at all.

But who could blame him for that?

In any case, the Academy’s probably where he spends the most of his time, but he’s still a bit of a drifter nowadays. And he likes it that way. He’s his own boss, makes his own schedule. He doesn’t have to worry about how late he stays out or how often he checks in with anybody.

… Actually, well, okay, _mostly_ he doesn’t have to worry about how often he checks in with anybody. There was that one time last year, though, when he forgot to answer his phone for four or five days and — in the _middle_ of a goddamn stake out — he’d had the shit scared out of him by a flash of blue in the passenger seat, and the next thing he knew he was being dumped on the living room floor to the sound of Five muttering, “Found him,” and the rest of his siblings collectively losing their shit over him supposedly being missing.

He’s made it a point to check in a little more regularly since then, or at least warn someone when he knows he’ll be MIA for a while.

But still. He technically doesn’t _have_ to.

A static crackle pulls him from his reverie, and Diego blinks, glancing at the radio sitting on the dash.

_“Calling available nearby units, we have a report of a domestic dispute on 18th and Main…”_

Diego sighs, sagging back into the driver’s seat.

Yeah, that’s a no. Domestic dispute’s not the kind of thing he’s looking to get himself involved in. He’s self-aware enough to know he’d only escalate things, and some douchebag wife beater would end up with a dagger in his eye by the end of the night instead of being in jail where he’s supposed to be, and then Beaman would probably skin him alive for landing him with all that extra paperwork. The department doesn’t need the headache.

He likes to think Eudora would be proud of him for that. The restraint. The thinking ahead.

Diego drops his head back against the seat and stares up at the ceiling upholstery. Christ, how long’s it been now, three years? Plus a month or two?

Still hurts like a bitch to think about her, though. Every bit as much as it did then.

_“Come in dispatch, we got an eye on that stolen vehicle, license plate…”_

Maybe he should swing by the cemetery on his way home. Drop off some flowers. Talk to her a bit, even though he knows she isn’t there.

And he does. He knows she isn’t there. Last time he talked to her, really talked to her, was just a month or so after the A-botched-alypse, when Klaus managed to conjure her long enough for Diego to give an embarrassingly choked up apology and to see her rolling her eyes at him and telling him to shut up and stop beating himself up over it.

_“We got a burglar alarm tripped at 1032 Washington…”_

She appreciated the reunion, Diego knows. That blue-tinted smile of hers is forever etched in his memory, after all. But she’d also made it clear that she was moving on, that she was going… wherever it is ghosts go, when they don’t want to stick around and cling to the land of the living.

So she’s not at the cemetery. And Diego’s never been religious or spiritual or anything in between, so he’s got no idea whether she can hear him when he goes there and talks and talks and talks.

He still does it anyway. It helps him, somehow. Makes him feel a little lighter and a little heavier all at the same time.

_“… attempted assault, suspect in custody…”_

Yeah, he thinks. He should stop by tonight.

It’s not like he’s getting any work done. The radio’s been nothing but petty crimes that the police can handle just fine without him. And he’d only turned the thing on in the first place because this stake out proved to be a bust. The door he’s watching hasn’t budged an inch.

The kid he’s been tailing is damn _sneaky,_ but hey, he’d expected this wouldn’t be an easy job from the beginning. He thinks again of the security footage his client showed him — the silent interior of his jewelry shop, a brief moment of static fuzz, and the same jewelry shop seconds later, entirely cleaned out. Every single display case, empty. Clearly the kid’s got a knack for tampering with electronics. Clearly the kid’s _smart._ One stake out of the kid’s legal residence was never gonna turn up anything useful, but Diego would have been cutting corners if he hadn’t given it a try anyway.

He’ll just have to go back to the research tomorrow. Back to square one.

_“We have an accident on the freeway, mile marker…”_

Yeah. Maybe he should call it a day.

The sun hasn’t even dipped down over the horizon yet. The city’s still all stretched out shadows and golden reddish light on the rooftops. It’s still early. He could grab some daffodils from that one shop on 7th before they close.

But the next call over the radio pulls him right out of that train of thought real quick.

_“Possible hostage situation at City Bank on 4th and Main. All units approach with caution.”_

_Ah,_ he thinks. _There we go._

So much for that.

Diego leans over, fishing the mask out of his glove compartment, and he casts one last glance at the door across the street just to be sure. Still no movement. He’s good to go; this stake out’s been as good as over for hours now.

Should have known there’d be something for him on the radio eventually. There always is. A hostage situation at a bank means guns, high stress, civilians in danger, and a whole bunch of cops that can’t do much of anything without risking the lives of whoever’s inside.

But Diego can.

Assholes won’t even see him coming.

 

 

“I mean, I knew it wasn’t gonna be much,” Diego mutters to himself later as he parks the car out front of the Academy, “but that was ridiculous.”

The assholes very much did not see him coming.

Idiots. Amateurs, really, a couple of young guys yelling out demands and flailing their weapons at whoever got in their way. One pistol, one semi-automatic. Diego took one step into the building, scoped out his options, and rendered both guns totally useless in under a few seconds. A blade to the flexor radialis muscle’ll do that — you can’t pull a trigger if your trigger finger won’t move.

Diego shakes his head at the thought, trudging up the Academy’s front steps. Seriously, when are these guys gonna learn that guns just aren’t reliable? Two knife throws, that’s it, and then it was almost hilariously easy to overpower them and leave them moaning and groaning and completely incapacitated for the police to pick up.

He was in and out in twenty minutes.

And of course, that left him plenty of time to stop by that flower shop on 7th, because Diego Hargreeves is nothing if not a man of his word.

So that’s where he ended up spending most of the night. At the cemetery, chatting it up with the ether over Eudora Patch’s grave.

Bundle of daffodils in hand, he’d gone ahead and hopped the fence just after closing time so he’d have the place all to himself, and then he beelined for the absolute _mountain_ of flowers that covers her plot all year round. Flowers from the precinct, from coworkers she knew and coworkers she didn’t, from family, from friends. Diego tucked his own in with the rest, nestled them right front and center, and then he flopped down onto his butt in the dirt and talked and talked and talked.

He talked about the idiots at the bank. He talked about this new case, how it’s giving him more trouble than he’s used to. He talked about the kid at the gym he’s been teaching to box. He talked about Allison getting partial custody. Mostly he talked about Claire, how smart she is, how quick she tears through books, how easy it is for her to bring everybody in that house to _life._ He mentioned how he still can’t help keeping an eye out, looking to see if Claire starts showing any signs of her mom’s powers — _‘cause you never know,_ he said, and _it’s my job to look out for her,_ and _you’d do the same damn thing, Eudora, I know you would._

He also reiterated for about the millionth or so time how much Eudora would have loved that kid. Because she would have. Everyone friggin’ does.

Now it’s well past dark. He spent a while there, lost track of the time.

As he steps out of the near pitch black outside and into the dim light of the Academy foyer, the place seems a little quieter than usual, even for this late, which is a surprise. Allison and Vanya are out, and Diego will be seriously impressed if his brothers managed to get their niece to bed at a reasonable time.

The first thing he hears is not Claire running around and screaming and laughing, but instead it’s Mom’s heels clicking across the tile.

“Oh!”

She’s making her way through the foyer with a feather duster in hand, and as she turns toward the door and spots him there, her face lights up with a smile. A _real_ one, bright and happy and dazzling, the kind he only ever started seeing after Dad was gone.

“Well, what a pleasant surprise! Good evening, Diego.”

“Hey, Mom.”

He closes the few steps between them and pulls her into a hug, one she returns with the kind of robotic strength that should seem out of place and downright weird for a woman her size, but it never does. It’s just Mom. And if Diego holds on a little longer and a little tighter than usual, well, sue him. It’s been a long day. He always kind of needs something like this after visiting Eudora anyway.

“How are you, dear?”

He clears his throat as he pulls away, keeping one hand on her shoulder and offering a smile of his own. “Good, yeah. The usual. You know.” He shrugs. “How ‘bout you? You feeling okay?”

“Of course.”

She says it with a smile, tilting her head, speaking in that tone that says, _Why wouldn’t I be, silly?_

Diego just nods. He always asks, just in case.

He gives her arm one last pat, and she turns and clicks off toward wherever she’d been going before he interrupted, humming a soft melody to herself and twirling the feather duster as she goes. Diego watches her leave for a second, then huffs a sigh and rolls his shoulders, striding past the living room doors and toward the staircase so he can go crash in his own bed for the night and wake up to a full house and a good hot breakfast.

As he reaches the bottom of the staircase, through, he stops.

_… Hold up._

He backpedals until he’s in view of the living room doors again, leaning back to raise an eyebrow at the… scene, in front of him.

Now that’s something you don’t see every day, is it?

The living room looks like a damn tornado ran through it. There’s couch cushions dislodged from the couches and abandoned to lean against the wall, there’s a few sets of shoes scattered around, plus Klaus’ slippers and Luther’s big overcoat and Claire’s backpack and a few of her stuffed animals. There’s books and papers and knick knacks all stacked in haphazard piles on the floor, too — because every single piece of furniture that those things _were_ on has now been moved, turned over onto its side, and pushed to the back half of the room.

Both pieces of the L-shaped couch, plus the loveseat, plus two side tables and the coffee table, all balanced on their sides and forming the walls of an _absolutely massive_ blanket fort.

A blanket palace. Damn thing’s probably the size of his bedroom.

Now that he’s paying attention, he can see a faint light showing through the blanket walls, and he can just barely make out some whispering coming from inside.

Oh, yeah, Allison is definitely gonna kill Luther and Klaus (and, if she can figure out a way to do it, probably Ben, too) when she finds out they’ve let Claire stay up this late. What is it now, almost ten? Diego almost laughs. Still, though, he’d be lying if he said he had any intention of enforcing a bedtime. That ain’t his job, and besides, Claire’s supposed to be on _vacation._ There are no bedtimes on vacation.

He carefully tiptoes his way across the mess, and he crouches down by what he assumes is the blanket-draped entrance.

“Knock, knock,” he says, and right away, the giggling and whispering inside cuts off. “Anybody home?”

Hardly a second passes before the blankets in front of him part, and Klaus sticks his head out, and _only_ his head, to direct narrowed eyes up at Diego. He must be kneeling on the floor.

“Who goes there?”

Diego makes a face. “Who do you think? The cool uncle,” he says, gesturing at himself. “Let me in.”

Klaus sucks in a breath through his teeth. _“Ooh,_ I don’t know about that. What’s the password?”

Diego rolls his eyes and opens his mouth to tell Klaus some kid-friendly version of _screw off,_ but then Claire’s voice stops him. “Uncle _Klaus,”_ she scolds, and Klaus jerks like he’s been shoved, breaking his suspicious stare up at Diego to snort a laugh. “He doesn’t need a password.”

“We don’t even have a password,” Luther’s voice adds quietly from somewhere inside.

Klaus looks undeterred, but the blankets shift, and a big old pile of dark brown curls comes poking out right beneath his head, quickly followed by Claire shoving her way past him to exit the fort.

“Hi, Uncle Diego!” she says, and since he’s already crouched down to her height she throws her arms around his neck in a hug. “You can come in, but you gotta take your shoes off first.”

Without another word she turns and dives right back into the blanket fort, bowling straight through Klaus. Diego shakes his head, smiling, and he toes off his boots and shrugs off his leather jacket, too, tossing it aside before he parts the blankets and shimmies his way inside.

And, well, if the outside of the fort was an impressive piece of work, the inside is even more so. At least the actual structure of it Diego could shrug off as the product of Claire having an uncle with super strength. The inside, though, looks like Claire took charge of the whole thing. It’s piled high with pillows and a _sea_ of blankets and stuffed animals from who-knows-where, all arranged in a neat and orderly circle around the perimeter. At the center of the floor is an electric lantern, and above their heads are a bunch of string lights — and where the hell she found _string lights_ Diego has no idea — stretched from couch to couch to table beneath the blanket ceiling, their wires trailing out through the back of the fort toward wherever the nearest outlet is.

Klaus is settling back down with his butt on the floor, lounging back against a stack of pillows and twisting at an odd angle so he can kick his feet over Luther’s lap. Luther, for his part, mostly looks like he’s trying not to move for fear of knocking anything over, his big shoulders hunched in and a tentative smile on his face. Ben’s sitting cross-legged on a pillow opposite them, and he gives Diego a wave as he comes in.

“You’re _just_ in time,” Claire says. She turns and drops down onto a pillow beside Ben, leaving a space for Diego between herself and Klaus.

“Oh, yeah?” Diego asks, sitting down and making himself comfortable. “Why’s that?”

Luther answers, “Because Claire’s about to tell a scary story.”

Klaus adds with a wink, “Not a ghost story through. ‘Twould be insensitive with the present company.”

Diego smacks him in the back of the head.

“Ow! What? It’s true,” Klaus whines, twisting to shoot a glare at Diego. Then, leaning over him to address Claire, he asks, “Isn’t that right, honey bunch?”

“Duh,” Claire says. “It’s gotta be a scary story. Ghosts aren’t scary.”

Klaus clicks his tongue. “Oh, well, I don’t know if I’d say that. Ben’s plenty scary when he’s mad. You know he even beat me up once, back when we saved the world that one time.”

“Nah, he’s making that up,” Ben says without hesitation. “Never happened.”

Diego snorts, Luther ducks his head to hide a silent laugh, and Klaus lets out a dramatic gasp, his jaw dropping. “Lies! Lies and slander,” he cries, a hand on his chest. “The audacity! The deceit! And to our _own niece,_ Benjamin!”

“Hey,” Diego cuts in, nudging him with an elbow. “You gonna let Claire tell her story, or what?”

“Well, of course, brother dearest,” Klaus drones, abandoning his makeshift chair of pillows to lean fully back against Diego’s side, his long legs still sprawled over Luther’s lap. He tips his head back against Diego’s shoulder so he can eye up the blanket fort’s ceiling. “We should get the lights first, though, don’t you think?”

Claire gasps. “Ooh, good idea!”

Every single one of them, including Claire, automatically turns to look at Ben, and he pauses for a beat before he rolls his eyes.

“Oh, sure, don’t worry guys. The dead guy’ll get it.”

“Come on, you can literally walk _through the walls_ without messing anything up,” Klaus points out. “And I worked hard putting this thing together, I just can’t risk knocking it over.”

“Hey,” Luther protests.

“Yeah, hey!” Claire agrees, giggling. “You didn’t build the fort, me and Uncle Luther did.”

 _Me and Uncle Luther did,_ she says, and Diego can see it — has seen it, Luther lifting up couches or other absurdly heavy things in  _just_ the right way so that Claire thinks all seventy-something pounds of her is somehow helping. He would be lying if he said it wasn’t, maybe, a little bit adorable.

“Well, I helped decorate it, didn’t I?” Klaus asks as Ben fades out of sight, and a second later there’s the sound of a plug being yanked from its socket. All the string lights above wink out, leaving only the light of the lantern to see by. “That is every _bit_ as important as building it.”

“Eh,” Diego says with a shrug, “I dunno about that.”

“No, yeah, he’s right, it totally is,” Claire agrees, nodding, and Klaus leans all the way across Diego’s lap — he’s _entirely_ horizontal now — to hold his hand palm up for Claire to give him a low-five, which she does.

 _“See,_ Diego?”

Diego pinches the bridge of his nose. “Right. So, uh, Claire? Story time?”

“Yeah!” Claire says.

Ben pops back into existence in the same place he’d just left, cross-legged on the pillow on Claire’s other side. She reaches forward and grabs the only remaining source of light by its handle, and the shadows shift and lengthen along the blanket walls as she drags it toward her. She turns the lantern over in her hands, positioning it so that it throws a bunch of harsh angled highlights against her face, alighting her eyes from below in a way that would be eerie, Diego guesses, if it weren’t on the face of an eight-year-old.

“Okay,” Claire begins, dropping her voice to a whisper so that all four of them are forced to fall completely still and silent. “This is the story of two brothers, who lived in a big creaky old house on a farm…”

“Ooh, what were their names?”

Diego smacks Klaus in the head again. “Don’t interrupt.”

_“Ow.”_

“Their names were Billy and Tommy,” Claire continues, apparently unbothered by the interruption. “And their old creaky house was on a really long road in the middle of nowhere, and their whole backyard was a cornfield going as _far_ as the eye could see. They weren’t _ever_ allowed to go out into the cornfield, ‘cause their mom said it was too dangerous for little boys, but they really, really wanted to.

“So,” she says, leaning over the lantern, “it was a _dark_ and stormy night. Billy and Tommy were home alone, so they decided to go out exploring in the cornfield. It had all these long winding paths like a maze, and they wanted to see where all the paths went. They were both kinda scared, since it was so dark and stormy and creepy out there, but Billy wouldn’t tell Tommy that he was scared, and Tommy wouldn’t tell Billy that he was scared, so they both thought they were the only scared one. So they grabbed an umbrella and they went out to explore.”

Klaus slowly lifts himself up, no longer lying across both Diego’s and Luther’s laps, and he straightens all the way up until he’s sitting upright and cross-legged on the floor, leaning his elbows on his knees to give Claire his undivided attention. All of them are like that, really. Including Diego.

He has to admit, the kid sure knows how to create some ambiance.

“They creeped out the back door and walked _real_ close together under the umbrella. Their sneakers were squishing in the cold, wet ground,” she says, hunching over the lantern with a smile on her face, “and the cornfield was getting closer and closer, but then—”

She freezes, eyes going wide.

“Tommy stopped. He grabbed Billy to stop him, too. And when Billy asked him, ‘Why’d you stop?’ Tommy reached one hand out…”

She lifts an arm, her hand shaking with fear despite the gleeful mischief clear in her eyes, and points at the blanket fort’s entrance. Ben and Luther and Klaus all turn to look expectantly at it, like something’s about to jump through it, before they turn their attention back to Claire.

“… and he pointed at the cornfield like this, and said, ‘Look, Billy!’ And when Billy looked, he saw a _figure_ in the cornfield.”

She drops her hands back to either side of the lantern, pausing for effect.

Diego shifts to get a little more comfortable. He’s getting a weird feeling, a sort of shudder that doesn’t so much _crawl_ up his spine as much as it _settles_ there, an uncomfortable itch that refuses to be shaken from between his shoulderblades. It’s not _fear_ — that’s ridiculous. He’s surrounded by blankets and pillows and fuzzy stuffed animals, he’s surrounded by his brothers, and he’s listening to a story being told by his eight-year-old niece.

It’s not fear. It kinda feels like something close, but… nah. That can’t be it.

“The figure was moving really slow,” Claire continues with her story before Diego can think too hard on it, “and it was so hard to see through the rain and the dark, but Billy thought it kinda looked like a person. So he said ‘Hey! Who’s there?’”

Klaus scoots across the floor, inching closer to Diego so their sides are pressed together, and out of the corner of his eye he sees Klaus flailing his other arm out to grab Luther by his sleeve and tug him closer, too, so Klaus ends up sandwiched firmly between them.

And Diego… wants to roll his eyes at that, he does, but he’s a little too focused on the story at the moment.

“The figure didn’t answer,” Claire says. “But it _did_ move.”

Klaus gasps, dropping his chin into his hands, his fingers covering his mouth as he watches Claire with wide eyes.

“It turned toward Tommy and Billy, and it was hard to tell because of all the rain, but they thought it looked like it was coming closer, really, _reeeally_ slow with its creepy, long, skinny legs. Tommy grabbed Billy ‘cause he was super scared now, and he said, ‘Billy, we should go back inside and lock the door.’ But Billy didn’t want Tommy to know how scared he was, so he didn’t run away. He yelled at the thing in the cornfield and said, ‘Hey, you! Whoever’s there, you better not come any closer!’

“But the figure in the cornfield kept coming closer anyway. Tommy was holding real tight onto Billy’s arm still. He was _shaking_ he was so scared, ‘cause the figure didn’t even look _human_ anymore. It was too tall and too skinny, and its legs were all bendy in the wrong places and weird shaped, and it was moving all funny while it kept… creeping… closer…”

Ben’s chewing on his cheek like he always used to do when he got nervous, watching Claire with rapt attention. Luther’s hunched over, almost fully pressed into Klaus’ side as he watches and listens. Klaus is flitting his fingers nervously over his mouth.

But none of them’s making a sound. Diego can hear the soft creak of the house around them, the faint whistle of the wind through a cracked window somewhere.

Hell, he’d probably be able to hear a pin drop at this point.

“And then, when it was so close that they could _almost_ start to see what it really looked like through all the rain,” Claire whispers, her voice getting quieter and quieter so they have to strain to listen, “when it was _almost_ not just a shadowy figure anymore, and Billy and Tommy were holding onto each other super tight and shaking super hard… It almost looked like it was gonna stop moving. It slowed down until it was standing… totally… still…”

She pauses, leaning in close to the lantern.

“… and then it _JUMPED—!”_

And Diego swears to God that his heart leaps right goddamn out of his chest, because at the _exact_ moment that Claire shouts that last word, the dim barely-there light of the lantern is entirely washed out by an eye-searing flash of blue and another, different shout.

Klaus lets out a high-pitched shriek and latches onto Diego, Ben straight up _disappears,_ Luther stumbles backward and nearly knocks over the couch behind him, and Diego automatically grasps a fistful of the back of Claire’s shirt to yank her back from whatever the _fuck_ just —

Oh.

Oh, God damn it.

“Five, what the hell, man?!”

“Seriously?” Luther asks.

“Oh, my _God,”_ Klaus breathes, arms wound tight around Diego’s arm like a very clingy sloth.

And there, at the center of the floor and doubled over quietly laughing and shaking with his arms around his stomach, is their oldest most pain-in-the-ass brother. The blue light of his teleportation is just beginning to fade, and he doesn’t straighten up to stand — in fact he falls right down on his butt, still shaking with laughter and with that wide shit-eating grin still on his face.

“That, Claire,” Five says as he wipes a tear from his eye, “is how a professional does it.”

“I did a _really_ good distraction,” Claire says, lifting her chin and drawing herself up as tall as she can while sitting, a proud look on her face that has her looking like a spitting image of Allison at that age.

“Yes, you did,” Five says, nodding and catching his breath. “Yes, you did.”

Klaus’ fingers are digging almost painfully into Diego’s triceps at this point. He doesn’t let go, but he does lean his head over enough to shoot an incredulous look at Claire. A look that Diego’s certain he’s mirroring.

“Claire, honey, you _didn’t.”_

“I think she did,” Diego says.

“Oh, she did,” Five tells them. “Did great, too. She’s a natural. Clearly she takes after me the most.”

Behind him, Ben flickers back into existence and smacks Five in the back of the head.

“Ow! Hey, come on, Ben. It was Claire’s idea in the first — _ow,_ Ben! Stop it! _Ow_ — Klaus, stop making him tangible, damn it!”

“Language, young man!”

Klaus finally unwinds himself from around Diego’s arm, and Diego does not waste a second. He lunges forward and wrestles Five into a headlock too tight for him to teleport out of, holding him still so he can’t fight back, and Ben starts smacking him with a stuffed rabbit, punctuating Claire’s unrelenting giggles and Klaus’ whooping cheers with an _ow_ and an _ouch_ and a _stop it, Ben,_ and an _if you weren’t dead already Ben I swear to God,_ but Ben doesn’t let up.

Not until Luther clears his throat, anyway.

“Uh, guys?”

All of them freeze, turning to look at Luther — all of them including Five, who’s in the midst of _licking Diego’s forearm_ in an attempt to get out of the headlock, not that _that’s_ gonna friggin’ work — and they finally notice why Luther’s been so quiet this whole time.

The entire wall of the blanket fort on his side is caving in, held up only by his left arm braced over his head and by his other hand gripping the couch that’s half tipped over on top of him. He must have bumped into it when Five startled him, or maybe Klaus or Diego did, it’s impossible to know for sure.

An ominous groan sounds from the side table that’s perched on top of the couch.

“Yeah,” Luther says, wrinkling his nose. “Maybe you wanna take this outside real quick?”

“THE BUILDING’S COMING DOWN!” Klaus screams at the top of his lungs, even though it is absolutely not coming down as long as Luther’s got it, and he takes Claire by the wrist and hurriedly leads her out of the fort, knocking his elbows and his hip and his knees into Diego and Five and Ben as he does so. “Evacuate, _pronto,_ ladies! _Mach schnell! Ándale!”_

Five rolls his eyes, using his power to zap out of Diego’s loosened grip, and Ben disappears half a second later.

Diego wipes his arm on his shirt, making a face — because his grown ass sixty-something brother really resorted to _licking,_ and time dilation be damned, Diego swears he’s the only actual adult in this entire goddamn house.

Then he heaves a sigh and pushes himself up onto his feet.

Outside the fort, he hears the others saying something about making a bunch of those abominations that Five calls sandwiches, and he considers ducking his head outside to tell them that _maybe_ peanut butter and marshmallows isn’t a good idea for a hyperactive kid at ten o’clock at night.

He decides against it. Again, the kid’s on vacation. Who’s he to play Mom?

“Alright, big guy,” he says instead, inspecting the tipped couch and the groaning side table. “Let’s save our niece’s blanket fort from imminent collapse, huh?”


	4. better late than never

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In 2019, Allison starts planning for the future they've made possible. In 2022, she gets to live it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [chanting] MORE. FLUFF. MORE. FLUFF. MORE. FLUFF.
> 
> ... and a teensy bit of plot, if you squint

 

_April 27th, 2019_

 

Allison knows that everything that’s happened in the last few weeks — bringing their broken little family together, getting Five and then Ben back into their lives, realizing Vanya had powers, saving the whole world and _billions_ of innocent people — she knows, technically, that all of that is the most significant thing to have happened to any of them, this year or ever.

But somehow, this feels more significant to her. More important.

This is the next logical step. A step only made possible _because_ the world kept on turning, _because_ her broken little family pieced itself back together. This is something she’s had in the back of her mind for five years now, something she’d only ever entertained as the faintest of possibilities, but something she’s since realized that she always desperately wanted.

Her back rests against the headboard, her legs and hips buried amongst Claire’s pillows and blankets, with her baby girl bundled up and nestled close to her side.

The phone sits on the pillow in Allison’s lap, set to speakerphone, and they listen to the soft ringing from the other end of the line. One ring, and then two, then three and four. Allison starts to think that maybe there won’t be an answer at all, given that it’s past midnight back at home, but at the fifth ring there’s a _click_ and the shifting clunk of the phone being clumsily swiped off its base.

Then a voice, gruff and low, asks, “Yeah?”

Allison rolls her eyes. Her voice isn’t in the best shape tonight, but she presses a few fingers to her throat and manages a shaky little, “Hey, Diego.”

“Allison?” His voice clears up, gaining a concerned edge. “What’s up? Everything—?”

“Hi, Uncle Diego!”

Diego’s voice cuts off. There’s a second or two of stunned silence, and then the rustling of the phone being moved. Allison can picture it, her brother lifting the entire thing, receiver and base and all, to move onto the couch and settle in for a long conversation, probably schooling his face into a perfectly neutral expression despite the fact that there’s no one around to see him.

“Guessing that’s Claire I’m hearing?”

“Uh-huh,” Claire answers.

There’s a low chuckle from his end. “Well, it’s, uh… nice to finally meet you, kid.”

“Nice to meet you, too!”

“Oh, yeah, I’ll bet,” he says. “Better late than never, huh?”

Claire nods, snuggling closer to Allison. “Mm-hmm.”

“Guess your mom got home okay?”

“Yeah, she did.”

“That’s good, I know she missed you a — uh, a whole lot,” Diego says, very obviously tripping over the words _a hell of a lot._ Diego is not used to kids. None of her family is, really, but she’d be lying if she said that hearing him try so hard didn’t make her heart swell a few sizes. “How are, uh… How are you guys doing?”

“I’m good. Mommy can’t talk too much, she has a sore throat.”

“Oh, yeah, yeah, I know all about that,” Diego answers. “She’ll be alright, though. Your mom’s tough. She’s just gotta remember to take it easy, you know, let it get better on its own.”

That’s more directed at _her_ than at Claire, Allison knows. In the days before she got on the flight back to L.A., she’d only been scolded multiple times by nearly every single one of them for pushing her limits too far. Four times from Mom, twice from Klaus (though he swore the second one was repeated verbatim from Ben), and more times than she could _count_ from Diego and Five and Luther.

Diego adds, “You gonna take care of her until then, kid? Keep her out of trouble?”

Claire nods again. “Uh-huh. Mommy said the doctor said that she’s only allowed to talk a little bit, so she can’t read me bedtime stories yet, but that’s okay, ‘cause I started reading bedtime stories on my own now, so I can tell her all the stories I want until her throat gets better.”

“That’s good, kiddo. Good on you. How old are you now? Five?”

“I’m almost five and a _half.”_

Diego lets out a low whistle. “Tell you what, I don’t think I started reading books ‘til I was way older than that. You must be pretty smart, huh?”

At the same time that Claire answers, “Uh-huh,” there’s another sound from Diego’s end of the line. It’s a new voice, far enough away from the phone that it’s barely audible. Allison can’t make out who it is, but whatever they say rises in pitch at the end — a question, she thinks, and probably something along the lines of _who the hell are you talking to this late at night?_

Diego’s response confirms that much.

“Oh, uh,” he starts and then pauses, hesitant. “It’s Allison and Claire.”

“Who’s there, Uncle Diego?”

“It’s…” he starts to answer, but again, he pauses. There’s a second or two in which he seems to think something over, and then he pulls the phone away from his face and says a little louder to whoever it is, “Hey, get over here and come say hi to your niece.”

If there’s a response, it’s too quiet for Allison or Claire to hear it.

“Don’t be a baby,” Diego says, and Allison’s brow creases. She doesn’t know which of her siblings Diego is talking to, but who out of them would be nervous about talking to Claire? Not Luther, she guesses, since he’s already spoken to Claire before. It could be Vanya, for whom nervousness is almost a default state, even after all they’ve been through. Maybe it’s Ben, assuming he’s corporeal at the moment, and he’s worried that his being a ghost might be scary for a five-year-old.

Diego continues, a rare note of gentleness in his voice, “Come on. She wants to meet everybody.”

There’s a weird sound, then, a blend of radio distortion and static, but it gives way to silence again after only half a second. Allison hears the old couch give a familiar little _creak_ as someone else sits down, and then the dull rustle of the phone being handed off.

Another two or three seconds pass in silence, and then:

“… Hi, Claire.”

 _Oh,_ Allison thinks, because she hadn’t been expecting that voice, and she certainly hadn’t expected that voice to sound so _small._

Five and nervousness just don’t go together, not in Allison’s mind. Even when they were kids she remembers seeing it in him only in the briefest of moments, always covered up quickly if anyone so much as glanced in his direction. And since he’s been back, ever since he came crashing back into their lives with his painfully familiar face, but with all those horrible years and years and years always present as a weight on his shoulders and a shadow behind his eyes, well. That rarity had dwindled down until it almost seemed an impossibility.

But it’s there, the nervousness, the hesitance, clear and present even through a phone receiver from three thousand miles away. He doesn’t say anything else, not at first, so Allison nudges Claire to get her attention and holds up five fingers, mouthing his name so Claire knows who she’s talking to.

Claire gasps and turns back toward the phone.

“Oh, it’s Uncle Five! Hi, Uncle Five!”

There’s the faintest hint of what might be a laugh from the other end. “Yeah, that’s…” A beat of silence. “That’s me. Your Uncle Five.”

“You’re back!” Claire says. “Mommy said you went missing a long time ago and she didn’t know where you went, and I asked her if you were gonna come back ever, and she said she didn’t know. But I said if _I_ ever went away somewhere for a really long time I would want to come back because I would miss my daddy and my mommy and my friends and stuff. So I knew you would come back _eventually._ Where’d you go?”

Five doesn’t answer that right away. Maybe it’s because he’s still reeling a little from Claire’s impromptu monologue, but Allison thinks it’s probably because he doesn’t know how to answer. An apocalyptic wasteland, after all, doesn’t quite make for an appropriate children’s bedtime story.

Eventually he settles with, “I just… got stuck somewhere really far away.”

“You got stuck? How?”

“It’s… complicated,” he says. “But it’s okay. Like you said, I made it back. It took a while, but I made it.”

Claire sighs, blowing a raspberry between her lips in a way that’s adorably _adult,_ easily commiserating with her uncle in a way that only a five-year-old could do. “Yeah,” she says, leaning into Allison. “I went on a school trip to the Grand Canyon once, and that was only for a couple days, but I got so homesick so fast. And you were gone for a _really_ long time, like, longer than I’ve been _alive._ I bet you got really homesick, too, huh?”

At first, there’s no answer on the other end, and Allison starts to think he’s not going to answer at all.

Then, his voice significantly quieter than before, Five says, “Yeah. Yeah, I did.”

“Well, I’m glad you got back,” Claire says, and Allison feels a pressure in her throat that has absolutely nothing to do with the injury. She runs a hand up and down Claire’s arm and gives her a little squeeze. “Hey, you can teleport, right? Mommy said you just — _poof!”_ She waves her hands, like a tiny starburst explodes between her palms. “And then you show up somewhere else, like magic.”

This time the breath Allison hears is _definitely_ a laugh. Quiet, but there.

“That’s, um… that’s the gist of it, yeah.”

“That’s _so_ cool. You don’t even have to use cars and trains and planes to get places. You know, you can teleport here if you want!” she suggests, and she rattles off their address, like Five can just close his eyes and picture a mailing address and appear there in the next instant. “I have to ask my Daddy before you come, though. But he said it was okay if Mommy came over because she saved the whole world, so I’m _sure_ he’ll say you can come over, too. And you can bring everybody else, too!”

Five gives another little sort-of laugh. “Yeah, I don’t… I don’t think I can teleport quite that far, Claire,” he says. “I’ll see what I can do, though.”

“Well, when you figure it out, we could all have a big sleepover,” she tells him. Then she shrugs one shoulder. “Or you can just use a plane, I guess. I never rode in a plane before, but it sounds fun. And then when you all get here, you and Uncle Diego and everybody can tell me all your stories about the Umbrella Academy so Mommy doesn’t have to talk. It’ll be fun!”

And isn’t _that_ a nice picture, Allison thinks.

Her whole family together for the first time in her life, every single one of them, even the ones she’d thought were lost to her forever. As Five and Claire’s conversation goes on, Allison can’t help letting her thoughts drift. She can’t help picturing it. 

God, she can see it so _clearly._

She imagines Vanya curled up on Claire’s other side, and Luther sitting on the floor beside the bed, quiet and shy with his shoulders hunched in an attempt to look smaller. Diego would lean against the far wall, arms crossed but with a subtle smile on his face. She imagines Five claiming the foot of the bed and sitting criss-cross-applesauce, facing them, while Klaus sprawls across the width of the mattress in front of him. She imagines Ben, watching all of them from somewhere they can’t see, not just yet. Klaus would gesture wildly as he tells Claire all kinds of stories about their missions from when they were kids, ignoring commentary from the rest of them because _no, no, I remember it just fine, thank you, and I would remind the peanut gallery to please quiet down —_

Soon, she thinks.

It’s going to happen. She’s going to damn well _make_ it happen. Maybe not tonight, maybe not tomorrow, maybe not even _here,_ but it’s going to happen.

After a few more weeks of counseling sessions, a few more weeks of putting Patrick’s wavering trust on firmer ground. He allowed a sleepover tonight. Maybe he’ll be amenable to a few more faces soon. Maybe even a weekend trip to the Academy.

Claire’s going to know her aunt and her uncles. Allison’s family is going to know their niece.

Five speaks up again, pulling Allison from her imaginings, but this time it’s in a hushed tone that’s clearly not directed at Claire. “No, I can’t teleport that far. Don’t you pay attention?” There’s a pause, then an exasperated, “That’s not how it _works,_ Diego, it’s—”

Another pause, then a sigh.

 _“Fine._ Hey, Claire, I’m gonna give the phone to your Uncle Diego for a second, okay?”

“Okay!”

The phone rustles again, and Diego says, “Hey, kid, so here’s the thing. I know we can’t all come over there just yet, but I know everyone else is dying to meet you, too.”

“They are?”

“Oh, yeah, you kidding? Course they are. But they’re all asleep right now or at their own places. So I’ll tell you what. You call again tomorrow, same time, and I’ll make sure everybody’s awake and here to meet you and tell you all the stories you want. What do you think? Sound like a plan?”

“Yeah!” Claire agrees. But then she wilts a bit. “Oh, wait, but Mommy won’t be here. Daddy only said she can come over tonight.”

“Nah, I wouldn’t worry about that, kid,” Diego assures her. “I’ll have a chat with your dad. Make sure we’re all on the same page.”

Allison lightly clears her throat, winces, and says, “Diego.”

“What?”

“Be nice.”

“When am I ever not nice?” Diego asks. Five audibly asks, _How much time have you got,_ to which Diego mutters, “Shut up. I can be nice. I was nice the last time I talked to him, wasn’t I?”

 _Relatively,_ Allison thinks but doesn’t say. It is true that Diego had been the one to speak to Patrick over the phone when everything was over. He’d been the one to act as Allison’s voice, giving Patrick the highly abridged version of all the — and she's quoting him here — _typical Umbrella Academy bullshit_ they’d been through. He’d been the one to make sure Patrick knew that, if not for Allison, a whole lot of people would have died, and that she had nearly died for her efforts, too.

But he’d also been very… blunt, maybe, is the right term. _Got her throat cut open and damn near bled out right in front of me,_ he’d said. _So maybe try to not be a dick for ten minutes and let her see her kid, yeah?_

She didn’t voice her complaints with his tone then, and she doesn’t now.

It had worked, after all.

“Sure,” she croaks instead.

“Exactly,” Diego says, and she can practically hear him giving Five a look that says _I told you so._ Then he adds, “So, Claire? Same time tomorrow, you and your mom give us a call. Sound good?”

“Sounds good,” Claire agrees, her voice a little slurred with sleep. She’d started to drift off as the adults started talking, only to perk up a bit at the mention of her own name.

Five adds something that Allison doesn’t catch, and Diego repeats for him, “Oh, and you can call whenever else you want, too, kid. Someone’ll always be around to pick up. Okay?”

Claire gives a sleepy smile. “Okay.”

“Cool. Good. Well, I’m gonna let you go and get some sleep,” Diego tells her. “It’s gotta be around your bedtime, yeah?”

“Mm-hmm.”

“Alright. We’ll talk to you tomorrow, then, okay?”

“Okay,” Claire says, snuggling closer to Allison and closing her eyes. “Love you.”

That brings a wide, involuntary smile to Allison’s face. She knows that threw Diego for a loop. No one in their family has ever been the type to tack on an _I_ _love you_ at the end of conversations. They’d never been taught that that was even a _thing,_ but Allison has made sure that the same could not be said of her daughter.

After a beat, he recovers and answers, “Uh — yeah. You too, Claire.”

“Tell Uncle Five I love him, too.”

At that, Diego actually laughs. “Oh, I will. Don’t you worry about that. Goodnight, kiddo. It was nice hearing from you.”

“Goodnight, Uncle Diego.”

_Click._

 

 

———

 

_Present Day_

_June 3rd, 2022_

 

“I am never. Eating. Again.”

Allison laughs, shaking her head as she unlocks the front door. “You say that every time we go out.”

“I feel like I’m gonna _burst,”_ Vanya whines, shrugging off her jacket as they push through the Academy’s front doors, and she tosses it onto the coat rack in the foyer. “Just—” she mimes an explosion in front of her stomach — “explode everywhere. Why did we get dessert, again?”

Allison shrugs. “Because the waitress said the rum cake was really good?”

“Well, she was right, but still.”

Allison tilts her head in agreement, keeping her eyes down on her jacket as she fluffs it out and hangs it up. “She was cute, too.”

“Stop,” Vanya automatically cuts her off, but when Allison looks up there is a very obvious smile tugging at her little sister’s lips, her cheeks flushing a little pink.

“What? She was!”

Vanya rolls her eyes, lightly shoving at her.

“And she certainly couldn’t keep her eyes off you the whole time we were there,” Allison adds, completely undeterred.

“Oh, my God, Allison. Seriously. Not every woman in the tristate area is into me.”

“Says you.”

“Yeah, says me,” Vanya insists, though she’s still smiling. “And I’m…” she trails off, her head tilting to the side, her brow creasing, “… right.” She frowns, eyes narrowing. “Is Luther sleeping in the living room?”

“What?”

“Uh, rhetorical. He is. You don’t hear him snoring?” Vanya asks. “Jesus, he’s like a mountain lion.”

A part of her suspects Vanya is only bringing this up to change the subject, but Allison falls silent and tries to listen for it anyway. She thinks she  _might_ hear snoring, maybe, and after a second she doesn’t bother trying to listen any harder for it. This is a Vanya thing. A _Vanya who can pick up each individual sound in an orchestra_ thing, a _Vanya who can place a strange noise with eerie precision_ thing, a _Vanya who’s lived two rooms away from Luther for almost three years_ thing.

Allison shrugs. “Must have crashed on the couch?”

“Yeah,” Vanya sighs. “Let’s wake him up, I guess. No one wants to deal with him complaining about his back all day tomorrow.”

“Very true.”

As they make their way to the living room, though, they both stop dead in their tracks, frozen in the doorway.

_Holy shit._

“Oh. Uh, wow,” Vanya says, blinking wide eyes at the absolutely demolished living room, no sleeping and snoring brother on the couch like they’d expected to find — and no _couch,_ either.

Allison instinctively follows the mess with her eyes, straight toward the giant blanket fort erected in the back of the room. A giant blanket fort that can only have been constructed by someone who can lift whole couches with ease. A giant blanket fort from which, now that she’s listening, she can hear the distinct sound of a low snoring that can only be Luther.

“I’m gonna kill him.”

Vanya covers her mouth, hiding a laugh. “No, you’re not.”

“It’s almost _midnight.”_

“Oh, come on, Allison. What were you expecting?”

Allison lifts her hands in a helpless shrug. “I don’t know, a normal bedtime?”

That only makes Vanya laugh harder.

“Okay. Fair.” Allison shakes her head, looking up at the ceiling and praying for patience. “But still.”

She slowly makes her way across the floor, stepping around discarded books and shoes and slippers and a stuffed animal or two, careful to keep her weight on her toes so that her heels don’t click on the hardwood. Vanya creeps along beside her, quiet as a mouse.

And Allison knows, she _knows_ that she should never have expected any of her brothers to get Claire to bed at a reasonable time. Assuming they even tried to. And technically she supposes that it could just be Luther who fell asleep in this blanket fort and that Claire could, in fact, be asleep in her bedroom. But she doubts it. It’s also possible that Claire and Luther did, in fact, fall asleep in this blanket fort somewhere around Claire’s real bedtime, but she doubts that even more.

None of her brothers are capable of saying no to their niece. She knows that by now. It’s very inconvenient. It’s also, unfortunately, very adorable.

… Kind of like the sight that greets her when she lifts the blanket and peeks inside.

Allison freezes, crouched down at the blanket fort’s entrance, jaw dropped. And just like that, all her irritation is fully extinguished, vanished like magic, like it was never there in the first place.

Oh, she would take a million missed bedtimes for this.

“What?” Vanya asks, crouching beside her to get a look. “What’s—? _Oh, my God.”_

Because it’s not just Luther and Claire in the blanket fort. It’s _everyone._

Amongst the blankets and pillows and stuffed animals and crumb-covered plates stacked by the entrance, Luther lies sprawled across the floor on his back, open-mouthed and snoring, his head pillowed on a stuffed bear and a comforter tangled in his legs. Klaus is curled up half on _top_ of Luther with another blanket over his own shoulders, his arms wrapped tight around a pillow under his head, his elbows probably jabbing into Luther’s chest every time either of them shifts in their sleep.

Behind them, both Diego and Five are out cold, too. Diego is slumped against the upturned couch that makes up the back wall of the fort, lightly snoring with his head tipped back and one leg draped over Luther’s outstretched arm. Five is sleeping sitting fully up, arms crossed, his chin dipped down to his chest and his face completely obscured by his hair.

And Claire is fast asleep with the rest of them. She’s got her head on her softest fluffiest pillow on Diego’s lap, her feet on Five’s lap — or Allison thinks her feet are on Five’s lap, anyway, it’s hard to tell because of the the massive comforter that’s tucked around her shoulders and then extends well past wherever her feet might be, burying Five up to his waist.

God, Allison is going to burn this image into her memory. She’s going to get it tattooed on the inside of her eyelids or something. Her baby girl all comfy cozy and happy and safe, surrounded by blankets and protected by all her sleeping uncles.

Well, all of her uncles except —

_“Psst.”_

“Jesus, Ben,” Vanya whispers, one hand on her chest. Allison looks over her shoulder to see the hazy bluish shape of Ben crouched down behind them, a mischievous smile gracing his semi transparent features.

“Pff,” Ben scoffs, his voice a low murmur. “And Claire says ghosts can’t be scary.”

Allison rolls her eyes at that and then nods toward the sleeping cuddle pile in the fort, and she whispers, “How long have they been out?”

Ben shrugs one shoulder. “About an hour.” Then he gestures toward… something, over by the other end of the super messy living room. “Are you gonna record this for posterity or what? I’d do it but I’m not solid enough.”

Allison looks, her eyes scanning the mess. There’s books and shoes and knick knacks and toys. There’s a few abandoned couch cushions, the side table lamp, Diego’s leather jacket and boots, Klaus’ slippers, Claire’s backpack and sneakers, Luther’s boots, two of Claire’s stuffed animals that never made it into the fort, and — _ah-ha!_

There it is, sitting on its side like someone discarded it, like they tossed it aside and forgot it was there. Or maybe, she thinks, like someone tried to bring it to the blanket fort and dropped it when his hands lost some of their tangibility. Either way.

Klaus’ old Polaroid camera.

“Ben,” Vanya whispers, a smile growing on her face, her eyes on the camera, too. “You’re a _genius.”_

 

 

Later, under the mutual agreement that they’ll leave the others to sleep in peace a little while longer, Vanya and Allison and Ben sit in the kitchen, chatting over some freshly brewed decaf. Allison waves the Polaroid around even though it’s long since finished developing, occasionally glancing down at it and feeling her heart warm every time. After a few tries she had finally managed to fit Klaus and Luther and Five and Diego and Claire all into the frame. Sitting beside Five is a deceptively solid looking Ben grinning wide, holding up bunny ears behind their oldest brother’s head, and Vanya and Allison’s faces are squished into the bottom of the frame selfie-style.

How early does the library open, she wonders? She could stay up another few hours. Run there and make a few hundred or so copies.

“… and then I’m pretty sure Five fell into a food coma,” Ben continues his recounting of the night full of scary stories and peanut butter marshmallow sandwiches. He’s sitting on the counter, or appears to be, legs swinging and a pop of blue light emanating from the cabinet below him each time one of his heels passes through it. “You guys notice he even sleeps like an old man?”

“Well, he _is_ an old man,” Vanya comments, sipping at her mug. “Technically.”

“Still. He sleeps like a grandpa.”

Allison snorts, looking down at the photo again, and she finds she can’t really disagree. None of them have ever had grandparents — that they know of, at least — but Allison’s fairly certain she’s seen Patrick’s father sleeping in that exact position more than once.

“Anyway,” Ben goes on, “he was the third one after Luther and Claire. Then it was just me and Diego and Klaus. And Diego wasn’t gonna move a muscle as long as Claire was using his lap as a pillow, so we just kinda chilled until I was the only one left awake. It was a fun night. What about you guys? How was, uh…?”

“Luciano’s,” Allison finishes for him. “Pretty damn good, actually. That risotto was _insane.”_

“Yeah, I ate way too much,” Vanya says, leaning back in her seat. “I seriously don’t think I’ll ever be hungry again.”

“Eh, I dunno,” Ben says with a shrug. “Wait ‘til Mom throws some pancakes in front of you tomorrow morning, then tell me you’re never gonna eat again.”

“Okay, but I’m still really, really full,” Vanya groans, bordering on a whine again, and she sinks into the kitchen chair and tilts her head all the way back with her eyes closed, like she’s about to follow Five into a food coma, too. “We really shouldn’t have gotten that rum cake.”

Allison fakes a sigh. “Well, if _somebody_ hadn’t been flirting with the cute waitress, maybe we wouldn’t have.”

Vanya lifts her head, staring at Allison with her jaw dropped. “I was _not—!”_

“Ooh, cute waitress?” Ben asks, smiling as he pulls his legs up to sit cross-legged on the counter. “Do tell.”

“There’s nothing to tell,” Vanya insists, shooting a look at Allison. “Don’t joke like that with Ben, he’ll believe you.”

Allison lifts her hands in mock surrender. “Hey, I’m not complaining. I _liked_ the rum cake. And if you _hadn’t_ been flirting with her all night then I’m pretty sure she would have charged us for it, so…”

Vanya freezes. She blinks wide eyes at Allison, opens her mouth, shuts it, opens it again. “She…? She didn’t charge us for dessert?”

“Nope.”

“Sounds like flirting to me,” Ben says.

“What — no, come on, guys,” Vanya says, shaking her head. “That’s not — She was just… I don’t know, being nice. Doing her job.” Her cheeks are glowing pink by now, and she’s looking from Allison to Ben and then back to Allison, like one of them’s going to come to her rescue. “Seriously. One free rum cake is not flirting.”

“Vanya, I love you,” Ben says, “but you wouldn’t know flirting if it slapped you in the face.”

“You know, saying ‘I love you’ first does not make that better.”

Allison snorts, covering her mouth. “Okay, okay,” she relents. “Ben, Vanya’s right. One free rum cake does not count as flirting—”

“— _thank_ you —”

“— but writing her phone number on our receipt with a little heart next to it?” Allison continues, pulling the receipt from her back pocket and slapping it on the table with a wink at her sister. “I think that counts.”

Ben lets out a startled laugh. He claps his hands together, which makes a sound, then hops down from the counter onto the floor, which doesn’t. His shoes glide across the floor like air, and then he leans over Allison and peer at the receipt, all while Vanya stares, gobsmacked and unmoving in the seat across from her.

“What? But she…?”

Ben lets out a low whistle, his eyes down on the receipt. “Told you, Van. Wouldn’t know it if it slapped you in the face.”

“But I could have _sworn…”_

“The digits don’t lie,” he says, stuffing his hands in his pockets and offering a shrug. He strides back over to the counter and hops back up, resuming his leg swinging and kicking his heels through the cabinets again. “You gonna call her?”

Vanya’s cheeks remain pink, but her nose and ears make the transition to full on beat red. “What — but — I don’t even —”

“Vanya, it’s okay, we’re just teasing,” Allison gently cuts in, smiling, and Vanya’s sputtering dies down. “You don’t have to call her, but you _do_ have to admit that sometimes —”

“— on occasion,” Ben interjects.

“— I might be right about these things. I’ve got a good intuition for it.”

Vanya doesn’t say anything. She keeps staring at the receipt like she can’t quite believe it, and then she leans forward to slide it slowly across the table and get a closer look, her eyes fixed on the lovingly scribbled numbers and the little blue heart at the bottom of the paper, her fingers drumming a nervous staccato beat against the table’s edge.

After a moment she opens her mouth to say, Allison hopes, _Yeah, I admit it, you do have a good intuition for these things, I can’t believe I ever doubted you, dear sister,_ but she doesn’t get the chance to say it aloud.

“… Mommy?”

Claire’s voice is so quiet that it might have been easy to miss if Allison’s ears hadn’t been specially tuned to that sound since the day her baby spoke her first words. She sits up, eyes going straight toward the kitchen door, where her little girl is standing there with a blanket tucked around her shoulders and trailing behind her like a cloak. Her face is all scrunched up, eyes squinting against the bright kitchen lights.

“Oh, hey, peanut,” Allison says. “I’m sorry, did we wake you?”

Claire shakes her head, poking one arm out from beneath the blanket to rub her eye. “No. I woke up by accident. I had a real weird dream.”

“A bad dream?”

Claire shakes her head, wrapping herself tighter in the blanket, and Allison’s relieved to see that she doesn’t seem upset. Just tired. “I was gonna go upstairs,” she says. “But then I heard people down here. Hi, Auntie Vanya.”

“Hi, sweetie.”

“Hi, Uncle Ben.”

Ben smiles and waves, and Claire offers a sleepy closed-mouth smile in return. Each blink of her eyes seems to last a second longer than it's supposed to, and as if on cue, her jaw opens wide with a near silent yawn.

“Someone looks ready for bed,” Vanya says.

Allison couldn’t agree more with that. “You want me to take you upstairs, peanut?”

Claire’s eyes close against the kitchen lights, her nose wrinkling, and she nods.

Without another word Allison pushes her chair back and stands, meeting her daughter halfway across the kitchen and then squatting down to scoop her up into her arms with a little grunt of effort, and Claire gets settled with her arms around her mommy’s neck and her legs around her waist. She is rapidly approaching an age where Allison won’t be able to do this anymore, but she’s not quite there yet, thank God. Claire’s already growing up too fast, and Allison is _not_ looking forward to that particular milestone.

“Night, Auntie Vanya,” Claire mumbles, her cheek on Allison’s shoulder.

“Goodnight.”

“Night, Uncle Ben.”

“Sweet dreams, kiddo.”

Allison hefts her up a little higher to get a better grip, the blanket pinned between her forearms and Claire’s legs. “Night, guys,” she says, knowing she’ll probably end up falling asleep herself once she gets Claire situated. “See you at breakfast.”

As she starts making her way toward the staircase, though, there’s a _thump_ from behind her. She turns just slightly to look over her shoulder, and she finds Ben glancing down, where his heel just made genuine contact with the cabinet below him.

“Huh,” he says. “Guess Klaus is awake.”

No sooner have those words left his mouth than another _thump_ resounds from somewhere upstairs, followed by a much louder _wham_ that Allison thinks might be an entire couch being upended.

“Uh…” Vanya starts to say, and all three of them stare up at the ceiling as the unmistakable sound of rushed and heavy footfalls begins somewhere in the general direction of the living room above and makes its way toward the staircase.

“Claire?” Klaus’ voice sounds from the staircase as an indeterminate amount of feet stampede their way down the stairs. “Uh, where’d you—? _Ow,_ Diego—!”

A second later three of her brothers come barreling in through the kitchen doorway, Klaus elbowing past Diego who nearly trips over his own feet, latching onto Luther’s shirt for balance at the last second. All three of them look a little dazed, still half asleep and blinking as their eyes adjust to the kitchen lights. Diego looks the closest to alert, his arms tensed and — something, clutched in his free hand. Probably the closest projectile he could find on short notice. Allison thinks it might be a snowglobe.

Klaus is the first to spot Allison holding Claire in her arms, and he sags with relief, leaning against the doorframe.

Then there’s the familiar crackle of space ripping open, and the last of her brothers comes stumbling into the kitchen in a flash of blue, bleary-eyed and with his hair sticking up in every possible direction. “She’s not in her — oh,” Five says, blinking at Claire and Allison, then he drops out of what Allison instantly recognized as a defensive stance, and he rolls his eyes. “Right. Obviously. I told you guys there was nothing to worry about.”

“Bull,” Diego says, at the same time that Klaus gasps, “You did _not—!”_

“Guys,” Allison cuts them off, quietly, gesturing with a nod toward Claire. “Shh.”

“What’s…” Claire starts to ask, yawns, and tries again, “… going on? Why’s everybody scared?”

“Oh, it’s nothing, baby,” Allison assures her. “Your uncles just didn’t know where you went, is all. They were worried about you. Of course, if they put you to bed at a normal bedtime like they were _supposed_ to, that probably wouldn’t have happened, huh?”

She ends that sentence with a pointed look at her four brothers, a look that’s probably undercut a bit by the smile on her face. It’s hard to be angry when faced, once again, with the knowledge that her baby girl has a family of superpowered people who go into protective papa bear mode the second they think she _might_ be in danger.

“Hey, now,” Diego defends anyway, “the kid’s on vacation. Let her live a little.”

Five rolls his eyes again. “Jesus,” he mutters, shaking his head, then: “I’m going to bed. Night, Claire.”

He disappears in another ripple of blue, Diego sighs and runs a hand over his face, Luther sheepishly tucks his hands into his pockets, and Klaus shoots a look at Ben that Allison has a hard time deciphering, but to which Ben only answers with a shrug.

“I’m glad you guys had a fun night,” Allison tells them, honestly, as she makes her way past them through the kitchen doorway. “But I gotta get this little troublemaker up to bed.”

“You want me to…?” Luther asks, gesturing at Claire as Allison hefts her up a little higher again.

“No, no, I got her,” Allison answers. “Those L.A. gyms and personal trainers aren’t just for movie roles, you know. Besides,” she adds with a wink, _“you_ three have a living room to clean up.”

She ignores Diego groaning and Klaus sputtering some kind of argument behind her as Ben and Vanya start laughing at their expense, and she starts the long trek up the stairs toward Claire’s bedroom.

As they reach the ground floor, Claire mumbles, “Mommy?”

“Hmm.”

“Why was Auntie Vanya embarrassed?”

Allison barks a surprised laugh. She had forgotten all about that. “You could tell that?”

“Mm-hmm.”

“Oh, Auntie Vanya’s okay, honey. We were just teasing her a little.”

“I know. It’s okay,” Claire says, though that second bit sounds more like _‘s ‘kay._ She yawns again, and adds, “She was happy-embarrassed. Not sad-embarrassed.”

“Is that so,” Allison says, laughing again.

“Mm-hmm.”

“Well, don’t worry, it was just some boring grown up stuff. But you can still ask her all about it tomorrow if you want,” Allison tells her, knowing there’s no way Claire will even remember half of this conversation in the morning.

“Okay,” she says, shifting a little and wrapping her arms tighter around Allison’s neck.  “I _did_ have a fun night.”

“Yeah?”

Claire hums in agreement. “Me and Uncle Luther made a real big blanket fort.”

“I saw,” Allison tells her. “I think it was more like a blanket castle. You could fit _everybody_ in there, huh? All five of your uncles. I didn’t even know Uncle Diego was supposed to be home tonight.”

Claire mumbles something that’s too slurred for Allison to decipher. She’s definitely half asleep by now. Then, “Mommy?”

“Hmm.”

“Will you play with my hair when we go up?”

“Oh, of course I will.”

“Uncle Diego tried to do it like you do,” Claire tells her through yet another yawn. “But his hands are like Daddy’s. Still feels nice, but you have longer nails, so it’s better. I didn’t tell him ‘cause I didn’t wanna hurt his feelings.”

“Well, that’s very thoughtful of you, sweetheart.”

“Yeah.” She shrugs. “And he was already sad anyway.”

Allison frowns, tilting her head. That’s… odd, she thinks. And it’s certainly news to her. “Was he? What makes you think he was sad, peanut?”

Claire shrugs again, mumbling that noncommittal _I dunno_ sound into her shoulder. “Just was, I guess. ‘S okay, though. He was happy again once he got in the blanket castle.”

Allison smiles again at that, and decides to put it out of her mind. If something important was bothering Diego, he’ll tell someone about it; they’ve all gotten a lot better at that. She steps through the door to the little guest room that’s been Claire’s for the last three years, and she strains to hold Claire up with one arm while wrestling her sheets down with the other.

“I’ll tell you what,” she says. “Maybe the blanket castle cheered him up, but I think hanging out with you just has that effect on everybody.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Allison answers, gently setting her down and tucking her in. “Especially your Auntie Vanya and all your uncles. They all love you _very_ much, so seeing you happy makes them happy. Just like it makes you happy when you see Mommy or Daddy or your friends happy, you know?”

Claire hums, smiling as she tucks her face into her pillow. She opens one eye to peer up at her mom.

“I’d be really, _really_ happy if I got a bedtime story,” she says.

Allison snorts a laugh, shaking her head. God, this kid takes after her a little too much. “I don’t know if it counts as a bedtime story when it’s _way_ past your bedtime, Claire.”

“Please?” she asks, closing her eye again and burrowing under the blankets. “Just a little one.”

“Alright, just a little one,” she relents with a sigh, if only because she knows Claire is going to be in a deep sleep by the time she gets through the third sentence.

She settles herself on the bed and shifts around until she’s at _just_ the right angle to play with her daughter’s hair without ending up with a cramp in her arm, and she takes a breath, deciding on one of the many stories she has banked in her brain for times like this.

“Okay. It was a long, long time ago. And it was a dark and _stormy_ night…”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> next up: some of the hargreeves have a bit of a revelation, and the author realizes klaus hasn't gotten his own POV yet and she rectifies that immediately [i've abandoned my boy .gif]


	5. before, after

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Diego has a weird feeling. Elsewhere: Klaus, Five, and Ben have a bit of a revelation.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i wanted to put off publishing this chapter cause it's my birthday tomorrow and i'm tryna do ~fun non-internet things~ but like... i was too excited to post it. now i'm gonna be doing that obsessive re-reading thing i always do after posting a new chapter, searching for mistakes, on my birthday, because i love all of you and i'm a compulsive people pleaser ~~but at least i will have alcohol~~
> 
> also i just. really enjoyed writing this chapter and i was too eager to send it out into the world and see what you guys think, so, enjoy

 

_June 6th, 2022_

 

The thing is, Diego pays a whole lot more attention these days.

As a kid, sure, he was always more observant than the rest of them. Not that that was never saying much, but still. In those days when his words would get caught somewhere between his lungs and his throat, when each syllable was still a struggle, it was easier to keep his voice locked up tight, easier to stick to the shadows and watch and listen.

He learned when to expect if _dear old Dad_ was gonna be in rarer form than usual from the slightest twitch of his eyebrow over that damn monocle, the littlest change in tone. He learned how to tell when Klaus had a real bad day in training. He learned how to tell when Five’s irritable snapping was more than his usual _Five-ness._ He watched, and he listened, and he learned, because forget them all having the same birthday and forget the numbering system that put him at Number Two. He was the big brother.

And that’s what big brothers do.

He’d lost track of that somewhere along the line. Somewhere after Five and after Ben, somewhere between Allison fucking off to California and Luther retreating further and further into himself and Klaus spiraling and Vanya’s book. At some point, he’d dropped the childish belief that _that’s what big brothers do_ and he’d moved the hell on.

Sure, he still kept an ear to the ground and jumped on every call about an OD victim with his heart in his throat. Sure, he skimmed over tabloids when they mentioned the famous Allison Hargreeves and her rollercoaster marriage. And sure, he patrolled the street between Vanya’s shitty apartment and her concert hall a _little_ more often than the rest of the city, just in case.

But that was it.

Vanya could have moved out of that apartment for all he’d known, the tabloids could’ve been wrong, Klaus could’ve been the subject of any of his next calls, and Luther could’ve — shit, Luther could’ve done just about anything and Diego would never have known.

And when they all came back together, that old instinct to watch and listen came roaring back, that little childish voice that said _that’s what big brothers do_ speaking up for the first time in over a decade _,_ and he’d done his damnedest to ignore it. He’d shoved it aside, punched it down under all the anger and the vitriol and the aching raw hurt sliced into him over the last few decades. Piled under all that, the old instinct was easy to ignore.

But then ignoring it had led to… what?

It led to Five damn near leaving them all over again, collapsing from a shrapnel wound that Diego should’ve _noticed,_ damn it, because Five had been limping all day and Diego had brushed it off as nothing, as a minor injury, but this was _Five_ and Five once walked around on a sprained ankle for over a week when they were eight without so much as a flinch, all because he didn’t want anyone to know he’d screwed up a jump. A limp for Five was a goddamn flashing neon sign.

It led to Vanya falling in with some douchebag psychopath, too. He should have known something was up before it ever got that far.

And _that_ led to Allison’s blood soaking into the carpet of said douchebag psychopath’s cabin, and then to an agonizingly long car ride with his sister bleeding to death in his lap and a sobbing panicked Luther pressing one of Diego’s old shirts to her neck while Klaus shook in the passenger seat and Five peeled around corners, ignoring any and all speed limits and stop signs and traffic lights.

Yeah. Diego’s _maybe_ got a vested interest in paying more attention than he used to.

It’s something they’ve all tried to get better at, in the years since the A-botched-alypse. Paying attention. Asking questions. Looking out for each other. Diego’s just the only one that always had a natural knack for it, he thinks.

One key he’s learned over the years: Trust your gut. If there’s an itch under your skin, an odd hunch, a little voice in the back of your brain that tells you something’s _off,_ you sit the hell down and you listen the hell up. That’s saved his ass more than a few times since he started the whole private investigating thing.

If you have a weird feeling, you don’t ignore it.

Even if you don’t know what the _hell_ the weird feeling’s about. Like right now —

“Uh… Diego?”

Shit. Zoning out again.

Right.

Diego shakes his head and grabs both sides of the punching bag, ignoring the look he’s getting from Luther — one eyebrow raised, lines forming across his sweat-sheened forehead — and he says, still panting a bit from his own work out, “How many times I gotta tell you? Quit locking your legs. Bend your knees.”

The look fades. Luther rolls his eyes, but he sinks into a stance anyway. Knees bent, feet squared and shoulder width apart.

“Atta boy.” Diego pats the punching bag. “Can’t always rely on super strength, can we?”

 _“Eh,”_ Luther says, tilting his head. “You’d be surprised, actually.”

As if to directly contradict that, he lets out a puff, still breathless from the last round, his cheeks and nose bright pink. But at least he’s not beat red yet, which is an improvement from every other time they’ve done this. Thank God he’s finally listened to Diego’s constant nagging to wear a damn tank top when he works out; that stupid oversized hoodie was gonna give him a heat stroke or something.

And besides, it’s not like _he_ gives a shit what Luther looks like.

Diego shakes his head. “Power don’t mean shit without form, bro.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Luther relents, nodding. “I know.”

“Doesn’t mean shit if you’re slow, either.”

“Yes, thank you,” Luther says, rolling his eyes again. “Just—” he waves a hand, “next set. Please.”

Diego steps back to demonstrate, marveling for the millionth or so time at the fact that Reginald never taught their _super strong brother_ how to properly box. Asshole apparently stuck to weights and mission drills and _lead with an iron will, Number One,_ or whatever other bullshit he pounded into Luther’s thick skull over the years.

He pushes the thought away and shows his brother the next set. “Cross, jab, hook, jab. Nice and easy.”

Luther lets out another puff, nods, lifts his fists.

“And stop pulling your damn punches,” Diego adds.

He knows Luther’s gonna deny it before he even opens his mouth. “I’m not pulling my—”

“What, you think I don’t know how hard you can hit?”

Luther opens his mouth to argue, then shuts it into a tight-lipped frown and exhales through his nose.

“Cross, jab, hook, jab,” Diego reminds him. “Form should be the first thing on your mind anyway, but you’re wasting half your energy on pulling back at the last second. Doing that screws up your next punch.”

“But—”

“Cross, jab, hook, jab.”

Luther sighs and lifts his fists back up, and Diego braces the opposite side of the bag. They specially designed this one, carbon fiber reinforcing the chain that links it to the ceiling, dense weights interspersed with the sand so Luther doesn’t send the whole thing swinging like a piñata every time he hits it. Still never hurts to give it a little extra support, though.

They get started on the set, Diego muttering the occasional _bend your knees_ or _square your hips_ or _block your face._ But mostly they pass through the work out in silence except for Luther’s panting and the sound of the punching bag taking its beating.

Until—

“Bro. Stop. Pulling. Your. Punches.”

Luther lets out a groan. “But I can’t—”

“No buts.”

“Diego—”

_“Jab.”_

Luther deals a swift punch to the center of the bag, putting a little more oomph behind it.

“Jab, cross.”

He does it, but the cross is a little later than it should be.

“Still holding back, huh?”

“I’m not—”

“And still lying about it, too.”

Luther tilts his head, eyes widening in annoyance. “Seriously?”

“Seriously. Jab.”

Another groan, half annoyed and half exhausted. He jabs.

“Cross, hook.”

He crosses, then hooks. Still a delay.

“Come on, big boy, give it all you got.”

“I _am.”_

“Lying. Cross, hook.”

Still a delay.

“Jab. Cross.”

Again, a delay.

“Stop pulling your punches. Jab, cross.”

Still a delay, but a little shorter.

“Come on, man.”

“I’m not—”

“You are. Let’s go. Jab.”

He jabs. The bag sways enough that Diego has to tense his arms against it, his shoes skidding an inch back against the linoleum.

Diego can still tell he’s holding back.

 _“C’mon,_ Number One!”

The next punch is accompanied by a weird sort of crackle from above. Half a second later the whole bag _rocks_ forward, and Diego stumbles back a step, and another, and another.

“Oh, shi—” Diego sputters, arms still braced against the bag until he loses his balance and tumbles back onto his ass.

“Shit, shit, shit—!” Luther echoes him, and the slowly tipping several-hundred-pound bag stops midway through in its trajectory toward crushing Diego like a bug on the linoleum, one hand gripping it tight on either side. The chain that connected it to the ceiling is dangling toward Diego’s face now, its end still embedded into a splintered chunk of the _supposedly_ sturdy ceiling stud it’d been attached to. A quick glance above confirms it; there’s a watermelon sized hole in the ceiling, drizzling bits of plaster and paint onto the floor.

Luther’s reddish pink face peeks around from behind the bag, eyes wide.

“You, uh, you okay?”

It’s a little tough when he’s lying back on his elbows and when his chest is still heaving from trying to stop a half-ton bag of sand, but Diego tries his best to look annoyed. “I _knew_ you were pulling your punches, asshole.”

Luther stops looking like a scared little kid, which was kind of the goal, and he returns Diego’s annoyed look full force.

“Really?”

“Yeah, really. You had _that_ in you the whole time. I was right.” He cracks a smile. “Go ahead, admit it.”

Luther rolls his eyes again. “You know if I dropped this right now it’d kill you, right?”

Diego grins wide at that — the closest he’s gonna get to an admittance that he _was_ right after all — and he drops fully back against the floor, chuckling as Luther turns and sets the bag down as gently as he probably can. As Luther heads off toward their water and snacks, Diego closes his eyes and drums his hands on his stomach to the beat of… whatever song it is, playing low through the speakers on the other end of the room. He doesn’t know, Luther picked the music today.

A water bottle hits him in the stomach, and he opens his eyes to find Luther dropping down to sit on the floor as ungracefully as possible, still panting as he cracks open a bottle of his own. Diego sets his aside and resumes his drumming. He doesn’t feel like sitting up yet.

“What’d we learn today, big guy?”

Luther finishes chugging his _entire_ water bottle, lets out a breath, and says, “Don’t listen to Diego when he says to stop pulling my punches.”

Diego directs a deadpan stare up at the ceiling, like someone up there might commiserate with him. No such luck.

“No,” he says, patiently. “The opposite, smartass.”

“You nearly got crushed by it, Diego.”

“Yeah, and if you hadn’t been pulling your punches all this time, we’d have known the bag wasn’t strong enough a while ago, wouldn’t we?”

“I _guess,_ but…”

“Hey,” he cuts in, a little gentler this time. “It’s not rocket science. You rip a punching bag out of the ceiling, we get a stronger punching bag.”

“Stronger ceiling,” Luther corrects with a wince.

“Right. Stronger ceiling. Point’s still the same,” Diego tells him. “This ain’t our first rodeo, bro, you know that. Lot of stuff’s changed, but this house is still full of people that can do a whole lot of shit normal people can’t do. So we… y’know.” He shrugs one shoulder. “Accommodate.”

When he turns his head, he finds Luther chewing on his cheek and staring up at the hole in the ceiling. Then, quietly, he concedes, “Guess I was running out of home improvement ideas anyway.”

“That’s the spirit.”

They fall into silence again, Diego drumming a little faster against his stomach as the track switches over. One of Luther’s eighties mixes, he thinks.

Then Luther asks, “So what’s going on with you?”

“Huh?”

“You zoned out… what, five times while we were working through those sets? You barely nagged me the whole time until the end there. Something’s up.”

Diego considers denying it. Then he huffs a defeated sigh and admits to the ceiling, “I got a weird hunch.”

“About what?”

He shrugs. “That’s what’s bugging me. I don’t know.”

“How is it a hunch if you don’t know what it’s about?”

“It’s just… a feeling,” Diego tells him. “I dunno. It’s like an itch. Something’s not right and I can’t figure out what.”

“Is it the job?”

“Maybe. I dunno. This case I’m on is a bitch, so who knows. It might be.”

“The jewelry thief?”

“Yeah.” Diego reaches up, runs both hands over his face, lets them fall onto his stomach again. “Security footage doesn’t make any sense, but there’s no sign of anybody tampering with it.”

Luther shrugs. “It’s possible to tamper with that kind of stuff without leaving evidence, isn’t it?”

Diego nods, slowly, thinking. Something about lying flat on his back and being beat from a work out has him a little more willing to talk, so he talks. It might help.

“Thing is, though, the shop owner _swears_ up and down it has to be this fifteen-year-old kid that did it.” He thinks back again to all the research he did on the kid, how the more he uncovered, the less likely it seemed that he could’ve pulled this job off. “He’s a kid. Mom’s dead, Dad was never in the picture. Dropped out of school a few months ago and he’s been living on the streets ever since. Sure, somebody could tamper with the footage without leaving evidence, but how many kids that age do you know that are _that_ tech savvy?”

“Maybe he had help?”

“That’s what I’ve been thinking, yeah.”

Luther nods. “Well, you’ll figure it out.”

“Yeah. I know.” Diego sighs. The track switches over again, something a little slower with a heavier bassline. “But it’s not… I don’t know, man, the job’s not bothering me that much. ‘Cause you’re right, I’ll figure it out. If it really was that kid, he’ll screw up soon. Sell the stuff he stole to the wrong guy, you know, that kind of thing. He might go back to his old place where he was living with his mom. I’m staking it out again tonight. I’ll track him down and get answers one way or the other.”

“So then… if it’s not the job, then what else could your hunch be about?”

He closes his eyes. “I _genuinely_ have no fucking clue, bro.”

“How long’s it been going on?”

“Not long. Couple days, maybe.”

“You’re sure it’s not just… you know, normal anxiety?” Luther asks, not unkindly. “I get that sometimes. The feeling might be just a feeling. It might go away.”

“Nah,” Diego says without opening his eyes. “I’ve been through this ride before. Always trust your gut. If I feel like something’s up, something’s up. Even if I don’t know what the hell it is yet.”

Silence. Luther needs a moment to think over that bit of wisdom, apparently. Then he asks, “Guess we just… wait and see, then?”

“Yep.”

“Sounds annoying.”

“That it is.”

“You want company?”

Diego opens his eyes, raises an eyebrow. “Huh?”

“On the stake out. Tonight,” Luther says. He’s looking down at his empty water bottle, turning it over in his hands. “Might be better if you’re not sitting around by yourself the whole time.”

Diego hesitates, considering the prospect of being alone in the car with _Luther_ of all people for hours on end.

Funny. The prospect doesn’t sound as agonizing as it once might’ve. Luther is, after all, literally the only one in their entire ridiculous family who’s capable of sitting still and shutting up for more than ten minutes at a time. And he’s cool with awkward silences, of which there are _plenty_ on a stake out.

“Yeah, screw it. Why not.”

 

 

Klaus almost thinks it’s funny.

Not, like,  _ha ha_ funny. But… funny.

Or he will think so, later, in retrospect. Maybe.

Because it really is funny — it’s goddamn _amazing_   _—_  how quickly things change in this house. In this family.

Everything always turns on a dime. No real warning, no real transition period, just a _before_ and an _after._

There was before and after Five ran for the hills, vanishing from their lives forever — or, you know, so they thought. Seven siblings, then six. Before, after. Then there was Ben, human and solid and warm before, cold and untouchable after (again, so he thought, forever). Then there was before and after Dear Old Daddy kicked the bucket, too. Before the briefcase, after which was only the war and blood and napalm and Dave, Dave, Dave. Before that bullet hit, after which there was no more Dave, Dave, Dave. Before and after Ben’s fist connected with his face. Before and after Vanya’s powers and that horrible fucking bunker and the crumbling manor.

Never a warning. Never a transition period. Hell, even the drugs felt more like a swan dive than a gradual descent.

So it’s funny, he thinks, or at the very least it’s _fitting._

It’s fitting that when it happens, as most things in this house do, it happens when everyone leasts expects it.

The morning is as normal as any morning can be, for them. Klaus is kicking back on the living room couch in the early predawn hours, the half finished fruits of his latest knitting project pooled on his stomach. His attention is totally one-hundred-and-ten-percent _focused._ He’s done a lot of knitting over the years, made tons of scarves and hats and even two full sized blankets before, but this’ll be his first sweater.

Sweaters are more complicated. It’s gonna take more _finesse._

The only sound in the room is the clicking of his knitting needles, the crackling of the fireplace, the dull rhythmic thud of Diego and Luther making use of that new boxing equipment on the other end of the house, and the occasional sound of a page turning. Five’s curled up in the armchair and poring over one of his massive physics textbooks, scribbling notes here and there, like he does. Ben’s working on the seventh or eighth book in a fantasy series he’s been really into lately, sitting cross-legged on the floor with his back against the couch.

Sort of feels like old times, really. Back when the three of them were all alive, and all the same age, and they’d huddle together in one of their bedrooms during whatever limited free time they could scrounge up. Sometimes Vanya would join them, sometimes not, but Four-Five-Six were a constant for a little stretch there. Five and Ben would usually spend the time reading. Klaus would usually spend it rolling a few joints to stash them pre-made under his mattress.

No rolling joints now, though. _Nope._ No siree.

He’s over three years clean, thank you very much, and he is not planning on breaking that streak anytime soon.

So… sweaters.

After what might be an hour or might be three — Klaus really has no idea, but he’s done and undone and  _re_ done several rows of stitches and the morning sun’s finally started filtering in through the big windows behind him — the peaceful monotony is broken by the sound of footsteps lightly making their way down the stairs, and then by the _cutest_ little kid yawn from the living room doorway a few seconds later.

When Klaus glances up, he sees Claire sleepily rubbing her eyes with her fists as she pads through the room toward the stairs that lead down to the kitchen, and she says, “Morning, Uncle Five.”

“Hey, Claire,” Five answers without looking up from his book.

She yawns again. “Hi, Uncle Klaus.”

“Why, good morning, my lil’ _Schmusebärchen,”_ Klaus calls over his shoulder as she walks away, his eyes back down on his project.

“Hi, Uncle Ben.”

Ben flips a page in his book. “Hey, kiddo.”

She continues on her way, leaving the rest of them exactly as they were before, working on their respective projects in silence. The sound of Diego and Luther's early morning workout has long since quieted down, and the fireplace burnt out at some point when Klaus wasn’t paying attention. Now there’s only the hum of traffic outside, birds chirping, and the gentle clink of dishes from downstairs as Mom gets started on making some breakfast for Claire.

After about thirty seconds, though, Five snaps his textbook shut, so loudly and so out of _freaking nowhere_ that it makes both Klaus and Ben jump.

 _“Christ_ on a—!”

“Dude, what—?”

“Ben,” Five cuts them both off. He’s staring… not quite at Ben, but a foot or so to the left, his eyebrows knit together. “You’re not visible.”

Which… okay, Klaus thinks, but who cares? That happens sometimes. Ben raises an eyebrow at Five, like he’s thinking the same thing. Then he looks down at his own hand, inspecting the back of it and then his palm, as if somehow he’d be able to tell the difference. He twists around and looks up at Klaus for confirmation.

Klaus makes a face and shrugs. He usually can’t tell the difference, either.

“I dunno, I haven’t been… focusing on it?” Klaus says, shooting his confused look at Five. “What’s the big deal? Didn’t think he had to be visible to, you know, sit around reading all morning.”

“No, Klaus, he hasn’t been visible for _hours,”_ Five says, in that _don’t you get it_ tone he gets sometimes, the _how are you all so oblivious_ tone. He looks in the general direction of Ben again and shifts to fully sit up in the armchair, clutching the physics textbook in his lap. “I didn’t even know he was still here. I figured he left.”

“Okay, but again,” Klaus says, “why’s it matter?”

Five tilts his head, narrowing his eyes at Klaus like he just cannot believe how _thick_ his brother can be sometimes. It’s a look that Klaus — and everyone else, to tell the truth — has grown intimately familiar with in the past few years, so it hardly fazes any of them anymore. When he speaks it’s in a tone that they’ve _also_ grown quite familiar with, slow and with strained patience, like he’s talking to a kindergartener.

“Klaus, I didn’t know Ben was here.”

“So?”

“So, _how did Claire?”_

His question is met by silence for a second.

Oh.

Wait. No. He doesn’t mean what Klaus thinks he means.

Right?

“She…” Klaus drops one of his knitting needles. He gulps. “I don’t… Maybe she just assumed?”

Ben whispers, _“Holy shit.”_

“Hey, Claire?” Five calls out, ignoring both of them, and he jumps up off the armchair so that his textbook falls with a thunk onto the hardwood. Then he actually _jumps_ jumps and reappears at the other end of the room, already heading downstairs to the kitchen. Ben stands up and soundlessly speeds across the room to follow, leaving Klaus to fumble with his knitting needles and his half a sweater to tumble off the couch in a pile of limbs before righting himself and sprinting after them.

“Guys, come on, we don’t—!”

Neither of them listens to him, naturally.

They keep on speeding down the stairwell, and since it doesn’t look like either of them is going to stop and _listen_ Klaus speeds up, shoving past Five while trying to politely avoid running straight through Ben — he can at least try to get there before they do, if they’re gonna jump to conclusions and not _wait a second_ — and so all three of them end up piling into the kitchen doorway all at once.

When they do, they find Claire sitting at the table with a bowl in front of her, munching away at a spoonful of sugary cereal, her summer reading book held open in her free hand.

Mom’s at the stove, humming as she expertly flips a pancake in the pan she’s holding, and she spins around to see her sons in the doorway. She flashes one of her best dazzling smiles at them and turns back to the stove.

“Good morning, boys.”

“Morning, Mom,” all three of them automatically reply in unison, all of them staring at Claire, all of them unsure what to do next.

It’s always been in the back of their minds, of course, wondering whether she would inherit her mom’s ability. They tested it once, on her second or third visit to the Academy. Getting her to say _I heard a rumor that Uncle Diego smacked himself in the face_ did nothing, and they had all sort of assumed the coast was clear. Maybe she would develop some of her mom’s powers, maybe she wouldn’t. It was always a possibility creeping over the horizon, but one they collectively ignored and never brought up until they all sort of forgot it was there at all. Wishful thinking.

But they never, even back at the beginning, thought she might inherit someone _else’s_ ability.

“Hey, uh… Claire?” Klaus asks, sliding into the seat across from her. “Honey bunch?”

“Mm-hmm?” she asks, looking up from her book with those big brown eyes.

Those aren’t the eyes of a person who can see ghosts, Klaus tells himself. Those are _Claire’s_ eyes. All wide and innocent and, for a moment, not the least bit concerned with whatever's got her uncles all worked up.

Then the tiniest little frown forms between her eyebrows, and she asks, “What’s wrong?”

Five slowly lowers himself into the seat beside Klaus, eyeing Claire with a sort of fascinated intensity that would probably make anyone but an oblivious eight-year-old profoundly uncomfortable. Ben hops up onto the table without a sound, one leg dangling over the edge and the other knee pulled up to his chest, looking nervously from her to Klaus.

“Nothing, just, um…” Klaus trails off, unsure how to word it. “Earlier, just now, in the living room, you said hi to me and your Uncle Five and your Uncle Ben. Right?”

Claire raises an eyebrow as she eats another spoonful of cereal. “Mm-hmm?”

“Well, I…” Klaus says, leaning forward on his elbows and gesturing vaguely with his hands, “… um, I was wondering, you know, if you…”

“Did you see your Uncle Ben in the living room, Claire?” Five interrupts, without the typical jabs at Klaus for not getting to the point, without even rolling his eyes. He looks for all the word like Claire’s the only person in the room right now, and honestly, Klaus doesn’t really blame him.

Claire shakes her head. “No, nobody can see Uncle Ben unless Uncle Klaus does his magic.”

She says it like it’s the simplest fact in the world, and Five’s shoulders relax a little bit, even though he’s still drumming his fingers on the table.

Ben asks, “Can you hear me, kiddo?”

There’s no answer, and Claire keeps looking between her other two uncles as she waits for one of them to say something else. Klaus lets out a sigh of relief and sags down with his forearms on the table — because really, there is only room for one séance in this house, _thank you._ Never mind the fact that he would never, _ever,_ want someone as little and innocent as Claire saddled with powers like his.

“You can’t hear him, either, right?” Klaus asks, mostly for Five’s benefit, since he hadn’t heard Ben ask the question at all.

“Nuh-uh.”

“So, were you just guessing he was there?” Five asks. “Because he’s usually hanging around me and your Uncle Klaus?”

Claire tilts her head, forehead creasing. “No, I know he’s here.”

And just like that, the anxiety returns full force.

 _Know,_ she said. Present tense. _I know he’s here._

Shit.

Ben’s eyes go almost comically wide, and Klaus doesn’t imagine he looks any better as he leans forward, trying to at least not let his jaw drop.

“Claire,” Five says. “Is Ben here right now?”

“Uh-huh,” she answers without hesitation, looking down at her cereal and tapping the spoon around to find her next bite.

“But you can’t see him or hear him, right?” Klaus asks, and Claire nods in agreement as she pops another spoonful into her mouth. “So then how do you know he’s here?”

Claire gulps down the cereal, regarding her Uncle Klaus with her brows furrowed, her mouth a tiny little line. She hesitates, and there’s a little bit of worry in the way she glances from him to Five and then to her Nana still standing by the stove, so Klaus plasters on a smile and waves his hands and hastily adds, “It’s okay, we just, uh… We’re just curious how you know, that’s all. No biggie.”

Her shoulders slowly lift and then drop back down, and her answer comes like it’s another simple fact — or maybe like it’s something she’s never had to think about before, not until someone thought to ask her about it.

“Well, ‘cause _you_ know he’s here. Duh.”

Klaus loses the battle to keep his jaw from dropping. Ben breathes another, _“Holy shit,”_ and even Five stares all dumbstruck at Claire like an actual teenager and not the hardened sixty-something assassin he is.

Then, before they can say anything else, Mom brings four plates of pancakes to the table, setting one in front of Five and another in front of Klaus, then taking Claire’s empty cereal bowl and replacing it with the third plate. She holds up the fourth and asks, “Klaus, dear, you said Ben is here? Where will he be sitting?”

“Uh, yeah, Mom, he’s…” Klaus shakes his head, finally summoning that familiar trickle of power through his wrists and into his palms, and Ben flickers into a hazy blue existence for all of them to see. “He’s right there.”

“H— hey, Mom,” Ben says, growing more solid by the second, still staring at Claire.

“Ben, sweetie, you know you’re not supposed to sit on the table,” Mom chides him, setting the fourth plate beside Claire, and without another word she turns back away and gets started on cooking the rest of the _smörgåsbord_ she’s got planned for the day.

“Is something wrong?” Claire asks.

“Nope,” Five answers right away.

Klaus, maybe a little too strained, adds, “Nothing at all, cutie pie.”

Ben offers her an impressively convincing carefree smile, reaching out with a now corporeal hand to ruffle her hair.

She doesn’t buy it. She frowns up at Ben, then at Five, then at Klaus.

“Why’re you all scared, though?”

“Oh, we’re n—” Klaus starts to deny it, but Ben cuts him off.

“Just grown up stuff,” he says. “Nothing you need to worry about, kiddo. Your uncles are gonna take care of it.”

She chews on her cheek. “You sure?”

“Yeah, honey bunch,” Klaus assures her, trying to force his heart rate down. Can she sense that? Holy shit, can she read his _mind?_ Or is it just feelings? Does he feel different when Ben’s around? Is that how she knew? Holy shit. He has no idea, but whatever it is, he decides he’s gotta get her attention off of it at the very least. “Hey, so, I was thinking! How ‘bout we head down to that ice cream place after lunch today? That sounds like fun, right?”

Bingo. Claire’s face lights up. “Okay!”

Klaus lets himself relax for a second. Crisis averted. For now.

“You gotta promise you’ll finish a few more chapters first, though,” Ben adds, tapping a finger on her book.

“Yeah,” Five agrees, doing an impressively good job of appearing nonchalant except for the wary look he hasn’t managed to shake from his face. “Your mom’s gonna kill us if we keep letting you put off your school stuff.”

“Okay,” Claire agrees, scooping another spoonful of cereal into her mouth and opening her book back up. She hums a little tuneless melody to herself, moving on with the ease that only a carefree eight-year-old could pull off, completely oblivious to the wide-eyed looks being exchanged between her three uncles at the table because — holy shit.

Holy _shit._

 

 

“Holy _shit.”_

“Will you stop saying that?” Five practically hisses at him, gesturing with a head jerk toward the kitchen. “She could hear you.”

“Yeah, but… holy _shit,”_ Klaus repeats, this time at a whisper. He’s been pacing back and forth in the living room, tugging one hand through his hair and fiddling with Dave’s dog tags with the other, and he doesn’t stop now. Ben’s still sitting perched on the couch back with his shoes on the cushions, where he’s been silently watching Klaus and Five freak the fuck out for the last ten minutes.

Because Five is _also_ freaking out, thank you very much. Klaus can _tell._ He’s just not as… vocal about it.

“This is huge,” Klaus says. “This is _crazy._ Our powers can be passed down? Or, you know, maybe not _our_ powers but like, _having_ powers. Some kind of powers. I mean, how insane is that?”

“It was always a possibility, Klaus,” Five sighs, sinking down onto the couch beside Ben’s feet. He leans back and closes his eyes, pressing his thumb and his fingertips to his forehead like he’s trying to smooth out a headache. “We all agreed on that, it’s why we tested it. I mean, hell, it was one of the first things I tried to find out after — you know, after I found out about her.”

“Don’t suppose you found anything,” Ben says.

“Considering the world had ended when she was still five years old and my only sources were old magazines, no,” Five deadpans without lifting his hand away from his head. “Obviously not.”

“Well, I mean…” Klaus tries, “… we still don’t _know._ What if she’s just — weirdly intuitive?”

“Intuitive enough to know Ben was here when I didn’t? Intuitive enough to know…” Five trails off, dropping his hand and staring vaguely up as something new, evidently, occurs to him. “Shit.”

“Oh, so _you’re_ allowed to say it…”

“What is it?” Ben asks.

Five lets out a frustrated sigh and sits up, forearms across his knees, his gaze stuck on some vague point across the room. He shakes his head. “She knew I was angry,” he says, maybe to himself. “The other night. I thought it was just… you know, her picking up on things anybody could see. I mean, it’s not like I ever try to hide it.”

“That’s fair,” Klaus admits.

Ben adds, “She _is_ a smart kid.”

“Yeah, but she _knew,”_ Five argues, shaking his head again. “And she always does. She always knows. It’s never ‘he seems angry’ or ‘why do you look scared,’ it’s always ‘he _is_ angry’ or ‘why _are_ you scared.’ She just… knows. It’s not intuition, it’s knowledge. The clues were always there. How the hell I didn’t notice it earlier is _beyond_ me—”

“You weren’t looking for it, man,” Ben says. “None of us were.”

“So, what, she can sense emotions?” Klaus asks.

“At the very least, yeah,” Five says, and he resumes massaging out whatever headache is building behind his forehead. “I don’t think she can alter them. I mean, her moods _do_ seem contagious sometimes, so it’s worth exploring, but we can probably chalk that up to normal empathy. We care about her, so we’re happy when she’s happy, we’re sad when she’s sad, that kind of thing.”

“Uh… actually,” Ben says, wincing. “I think she might be able to alter them, too.”

Five lifts his head from his hand. “What? Why?”

“The blanket fort,” he says, looking from Five to Klaus, wringing his hands together. “That story she told us, remember?”

Klaus shrugs. “Yeah, but — what, you think she scared us with _superpowers?_ That’s… I mean, that’s insane, isn’t it?”

“Is it?” Ben asks. “You were getting just as freaked out as I was.”

“Yeah, because of a scary story. Not because she has superpowers.”

“Dude,” Ben says, shaking his head. “She’s not exactly Stephen King. She’s an eight-year-old. It wasn’t that scary of a story.”

“Well, yeah, but…” Klaus trails off, recalling the shuddering feeling that had crept up his spine as Claire told her story, the way he had needed to huddle between Diego and Luther like they were little kids all over again. “But — okay, _hang_ on.” He waves his hands, shaking his head and squeezing his eyes shut for a second. Because this is insane. It’s _insane._ “Maybe she worked some kind of ESP… thing,” he says, wiggling his fingers over his head, “when she told us her scary story. Maybe. But it isn’t… I’m telling you, there’s _no way_ she’s doing that all the time.”

“What makes you say that?” Five asks.

“Because — I mean, we’re _not_ always sad when she’s sad, are we? Or, you know, not all of us. Diego and Allison sure as hell aren’t, they just get angry at whatever it is that _made_ her sad. Remember? When she told us about that kid that pushed her on the playground that one time?”

“Caleb,” Ben remembers, nodding.

A muscle in Five’s jaw twitches. “I still say you guys should have let me at him.”

“Exactly! See?” Klaus asks, waving a hand at Five, his other hand clinging to the dog tags. “Proof of concept! That’s not… you know, some weird superpower that makes us feel what she’s feeling. That’s not a superpower thing. That’s just an uncle thing.”

“Okay, so it’s only _sometimes,”_ Ben says. “Maybe only when she specifically intends to do it, but Klaus, that’s still a superpower.”

Five leans back again. “Look, everyone needs to — relax. Not freak out. It’s not… _that_ big a deal. She can sense and alter other people’s emotions to some extent. Maybe some of their thoughts, too. We don’t know how much, or how exactly it works, and we’ll have to ask some more questions if we want to fully understand what she can do, but at least she can’t alter reality like Allison can, or teleport, or — God forbid — do what _Vanya_ can do. We can… We can handle this.”

“We’re gonna have to tell the others,” Ben speaks up.

Five drops his head back with a sigh and glares up at the ceiling. “Yeah,” he agrees, though he doesn’t sound happy about it. “Yeah, I know.”

“Allison first, obviously,” Ben adds.

Five lets out a low groan and closes his eyes.

Klaus brings both hands to clasp tight onto Dave’s dog tags so he’ll stop chewing on his thumbnail. Then, before the thought has even finished running through his brain, he says, “We should get Allison alone.”

Five turns his head to send a perplexed look his way. “Why?”

“Because… I mean, she should be the first to know, right? We don’t wanna drop this news on everybody at once,” Klaus says. He shrugs, looking to Ben for back-up.

“That’s not a bad idea,” Ben admits.

Klaus chews on his bottom lip, nodding. “Yeah. We’d just need to get Luther and Diego and Vanya out of the house.”

“And Claire,” Ben adds.

“Huh? Why Claire?”

Ben shrugs. “Because that’s what responsible adults do, Klaus. They have their grown-up conversations away from kids.”

“Right,” Five mutters, eyes still closed, “because anyone in this house qualifies as a responsible adult.”

“Hey,” Ben says, nudging him with a knee. “We’re trying.”

“So, we get everybody out of the house,” Klaus says, nodding. He’s squeezing Dave’s dog tags so tightly he’s gonna have an indent on his palms soon, but it’s still some small comfort. His nerves are frayed to hell. “And then we’ll tell Allison. All three of us.”

Ben nods, giving him that look that says, _Hey, I’ll go where you go._

Five lets out another long, exasperated sigh. “Yeah,” he agrees, running a hand over his face. “All three of us. Should be fun.”

 


	6. we're gonna be better

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They break the news to Allison. It goes about as well as you'd expect.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (fun fact: this is the first scene i wrote for this fic. i'm a sucker for teary hugs, man)
> 
> we're getting into some seriously schmoopy self indulgent h/c folks. that being said! there is a panic attack depicted in this chapter, and mentions of addiction recovery and past child abuse. pretty mild, but regardless, worth a mention
> 
> as always i love every single one of you that leaves a comment or a kudo, y'all made my birthday so much better ❤

 

For the first several years of his life, Number Four was just that. Number Four. The extreme middle child in a gaggle of seven, and he never really knew to question it. Never knew to hate it. Even if he’d gone back to shake some sense into his younger self — and oh, wait, actually he has done that, hasn’t he, just not _that_ far back — even if he’d said to a tiny Number Four, _hey, it’s kind of fucked up that you have a number instead of a name, wouldn’t you rather be called something else? Something unique? Something more you?_ He knows the little snot nosed version of himself would have just shrugged it off, because Number Four _was_ him, silly, and it _was_ unique. It’s not like any of his siblings were Number Four, after all. Only him.

So, no. He never really had a chance to hate being Number Four. It was a definitive neutral. It just _was._

Then being Klaus had been new and exciting for a while, before that also just _was._ Before it was just him, and long before it would become associated with the tone it was always coupled with. A scale that, without fail, ranged from disappointed to exasperated to pissed off.

Then he was The Séance, which he unequivocally hated. Yeesh, what a stupid, stupid name. Like he was some brooding bastard in a dark room with candles and crystal balls and all that nonsense. The Séance was someone who commanded over death. The Séance wasn’t afraid of the ghosts he summoned. The Séance wasn’t already cannonballing right into a few solid decades of hardcore drug abuse.

The Séance was a big, fat, stinking lie.

So yeah. Klaus has been a lot of different things to a lot of different people. And he has hated and loved being all those different things with equal and opposite ferocity.

Number Four. The Séance. Just Klaus. He’s been _little brother_ all his life despite sharing a birthday, _baby bro_ in open defiance of the semi-recently acquired age gap _à la_ time travel. He’s been every pet name under the sun to every kind of partner imaginable. For about ten months, he was by turns _Hargreeves_ and _kid_ and _boy_ and sometimes just _Private,_ which was sort of nice. The anonymity, the novelty of it.

But out of all the things he’s been there is nothing, absolutely _nothing_ in this world, that he loves more than he loves being Uncle Klaus.

Nothing beats it!

It’s the best. Klaus _loves_ being Uncle Klaus.

He knows the others all love it, too, he’s not an idiot. He knows that little bundle of sunshine takes everyone’s mood to straight up _ecstatic_ and then dials it up to eleven every time she walks in the door. Never mind any recently discovered superpowers; he stands by what he said before, that much is just _her._ Klaus sees how much every single one of them loves being called Auntie and Uncle. He sees how she draws those rare carefree smiles from Five, how Vanya seems to have ten times more life in her when that little kid is pressed to her hip, how Diego can’t resist picking her up and lobbing her into the nearest soft surface just to hear her delighted screaming.

It’s not just Klaus. Obviously. But he still feels like he’s the one who loves it the most.

Because he couldn’t care less what Claire wants to do — whatever it is, he’s game! Raiding Mom’s and Allison’s closets for a dress up party? Of course he’s all over that. Dragging Luther out of whatever he’s doing so that they can build the blanket fort to end all blanket forts? Oh, sign him _up._ Waking up in the middle of the night because she had a bad dream and her guest room happens to be closest to his room? Well, nothing to do but make midnight sundaes until she’s ready for bed again.

He even looks forward to the so-called “bad” stuff. The scraped knees, the tears, the broken hearts. Uncle Klaus is gonna be there, ready to make it all better with a smile and a joke and a fresh coat of nail polish. When Claire inevitably hits that teenage rebellion phase, that infamous “I hate my mom” phase that Klaus has only heard of but never experienced (he’d been too busy hating Dad, and Mom had been too busy being literally perfect), Uncle Klaus is gonna be ready. He’ll shit talk his dear sister all through the night, tell Claire all the embarrassing stories he’s got in him — which is a hell of a lot — until she’s feeling better, until she figures out that her mom was just like her, once.

Yeah. Klaus takes his job as Uncle Klaus very, very seriously.

… And that is why it _kind_ of feels a _little_ like horse shit that Vanya gets to go out and get ice cream with Claire while _he_ gets stuck breaking the news about her powers to Allison.

Yeah, he knows he was the one that suggested all three of them should break the news to her, but still. Christ, he’d have taken the mind-numbing hours long stake out with Diego and Luther over this.

But no. He was there when they discovered it, he’s gotta be there when they announce it. Time to take off the Uncle Klaus hat and put on the Big Brother Klaus hat, or… you know, whatever. Outside of Five he  _is_ the oldest, after all, no matter how much the rest of them collectively pretend otherwise.

But Jesus, he is so unqualified for this.

 _So_ unqualified.

Because he’s not an idiot, yeah, and he is the only one of their siblings with a single _iota_ of emotional intelligence, obviously, and he knows how to talk to people, sure. At least if you ask Ben, his very own tough-loving post-mortem hype man since the tender age of seventeen. All of that is very true.

But you know, he’s also _nervous,_ damn it. And it doesn’t help much that there’s a dead lady hanging around him today with a nasty dent along her hairline — blunt force trauma, maybe a car accident, he’s seen this ghost before and he can’t remember what it was that did her in — yammering on again about how Klaus needs to find her kids, or something. She’s a little harder to banish than the others, so that’s got him even _more_ on edge than usual.

Which is probably why, after he and Ben and Five bring Allison to the living room for an impromptu mini family meeting, and after Five begins with a very careful, very gentle, _We have something we need to tell you,_ Klaus messes up. His nerves get the best of him. The ghost’s voice intersperses with his thoughts, blocking out any real rational thought. And for lack of a better way to drop the news his brain opts instead for blurting out:

“Claire has powers.”

Judging by the gobsmacked look on Allison’s face, and Five dropping his head into his hand, and Ben’s muttered curse, that was… not the best of ways to go about it.

_Damn it._

Allison takes a step back from all three of them, her mouth half open, her brows knit together. There’s a moment of dumbfounded silence in which Klaus thinks he’d probably be able to hear her every breath if she were breathing at all.

For shit’s sake, even the ghost falls silent for a second.

Then Allison asks, _“What?”_

“We think,” Ben corrects, hurriedly, already trying to diffuse the worry on Allison’s face. “We think she might.”

“We’re almost certain, Ben,” Five says, low but firm. “Don’t sugarcoat it.”

Allison opens her mouth, but her voice gets caught halfway up her throat, and that’s how Klaus knows it’s already very, very bad. Her voice has been more-or-less functional for years now, but every once in a while, when she’s really upset or scared, her voice will fail her again. She’ll fall back into old habits developed in the months she spent in recovery, she’ll fall silent, she’ll choke on her words.

Shit.

“It’s okay!” Klaus hurries to say. “Maybe… um, maybe you should sit down?”

She’d been in the process of staggering back a step, but now she levels Klaus with one of her classic Allison glares, the kind that’s only _more_ terrifying with the way her hands are shaking and balled up into fists, the kind that says, _Don’t you tell me to calm down, asshole,_ even though all he’s really done is imply it.

“H— how?” she chokes out. “How do you—?”

The last word catches in her throat again, but the point is clear. Klaus opens his mouth for an explanation and comes up short on the _right way_ to explain it, the right way to make Allison see that they’re certain about this, but that it’s okay, that there’s nothing to worry about, really.

He glances up toward the ghost, who has finally, finally left. Thank — er, whoever. Then he exchanges a look with Ben on his right, who’s standing there all solid and alive-looking with his arms crossed and a tentative frown on his face. He looks to Five on his left, who’s watching Allison with his hands in his pockets.

It’s Five that comes to his rescue.

“This morning,” he explains, uncharacteristically gentle, but with an underlying tension that gives Klaus the impression of someone trying to talk down a cornered animal, “she knew Ben was in the room with us, even though he wasn’t corporeal at all. We asked her how she knew he was there, and she said she knew because _Klaus_ knew.”

“No,” Allison says, shaking her head. It’s not the aghast sort of _no_ that says she doesn’t want to believe it, it’s the stubborn sort of _no_ that says she just plain _doesn’t_ believe it. “That’s not—”

Her voice catches again, and her lip twitches into a frustrated scowl as she reaches for her throat.

“She could have — _assumed_ you were there,” she says, shifting her eyes to Ben.

Five gives her a rare sympathetic look, his mouth a thin line, and then he says, “We asked her that, too. She said she _knew_ he was there. I’m not telling you anything she didn’t tell us directly. Ben was not visible, and she said she knew Ben was there because Klaus knew he was there.”

“Besides, I mean, why would anyone assume Ben’s with me all the time?” Klaus asks, with what he really hopes comes off as a reassuring smile. “Now that he’s in and out of the land of the living, he’s just as likely to hang out with any of you guys as he is to hang out with me, you know? Right, buddy?”

“We think,” Five goes on before Ben has a chance to answer, “she might be able to… sense what other people are feeling.” He shrugs one shoulder. “Or thinking. She might be able to alter what people feel, too. We’re not sure about the specifics yet, but we’re certain there’s _something_ there.”

Allison’s shaking her head again, bringing one hand up to her mouth.

“No,” she says, backing up a step. “No, she _can’t_ —”

“She can,” Five tells her, still as gentle as Klaus has ever heard him. “She always knows when someone’s angry or upset or happy. She’s not just guessing, Allison, she _knows._ It only makes sense.” He shrugs again. “It’s genetics. Whatever it is that gave us our abilities must have given something to her, too.”

Again she staggers back a step, no longer looking directly at any of them, and when the back of her knee hits the couch, she lets gravity pull her down onto the seat, and she’s still shaking her head a little frantically, and —

Oh.

Oh, shit.

“Klaus, she’s hyperventilating,” Ben says.

Which — yeah, _thanks,_ man, he’s not blind.

“Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey,” Klaus says on impulse, crouching down in front of her and reaching out to lightly grab at her upper arms, a nervous smile on his face. “It’s okay, you’re okay!”

She shakes her head again.

And in retrospect, Klaus thinks, he probably should have expected that this wouldn’t go off without a hitch. But — no, hey, they _all_ should have had a better plan going into this, so the onus isn’t just on him. It’s on the self proclaimed geniuses of the family, too, _thanks._

Allison takes in a shaky gulp of air, tears pricking at the corners of her eyes.

Shit, shit, _shit._

Oh, Christ on a _cracker,_ he is so beyond not qualified for this. But then, Five is probably the least qualified for it, and Ben’s been more of a tough love kind of guy after the years he spent with only Klaus for company. And again there’s the whole _you’re the only one in this family with any emotional intelligence whatsoever_ thing that Ben’s so fond of telling him when crises like these go down.

So…

Shit. It’s gotta be him, then, doesn’t it?

“Hey, come on, it’s okay,” he says, as gently as he possibly can be when his own pulse is racing, and he runs his hand all the way down her arm until he can grab a hold of her hand, the one that’s not still covering her mouth. He wraps his fingers around the side of her palm and gives it a squeeze.

Ben walks a slow and careful circle around the back of the couch. Five stays frozen right where he is, just behind and to the left of Klaus.

That’s okay, Klaus thinks. They really don’t want to overcrowd her.

“It’s okay, just focus on me,” Klaus tells her, and he lifts her hand to lay it flat against his chest. “Breathe, it’s okay…”

He sucks in a long, steady inhale and puffs out his chest, then purses his lips and blows it out nice and slow. Allison doesn’t seem to get it, she just keeps shaking her head and taking in quick shaky gasps. Ben lays a tentative hand on her back.

“She — she can’t —”

“Allison,” Five softly interrupts her, “do what Klaus is doing.”

Klaus nods, demonstrates again. “Slow, in and out…”

He does it again, and again, and again. In for seven counts, hold for four, out for eleven. In for seven counts, hold for four, out for eleven. His own pulse starts to drop back down and level off, which is a nice bonus, given that Allison could probably feel his heart beating a fucking samba against his sternum when they first started this.

She doesn’t get it on the first try, or the second, or the third. On the fourth, she manages to make her own inhale last as long as his, but she loses it on the exhale.

“It’s okay,” Ben assures her so that Klaus doesn’t have to waste the breath. “One more time. You got this.”

On the fifth, she manages the whole thing, start to finish. They breathe through the sixth and the seventh and the eighth and the ninth, and then finally, _finally,_ she seems to have regained some control. Her hand tightens on Klaus’ shirt, grasping a fistful of the fabric, and she takes in a shaky little gulp of air all on her own.

Then she lets out a little hiccup of a sob, a tremor running through her from head to toe, and —

Klaus thought panic attack Allison was heartbreaking enough, but _crying_ Allison?

Something in him deflates at the sight of tall and proud Allison dissolving into _actual tears,_ so without a word he climbs up onto the couch and puts his arms around her. It’s a little awkward, folding his long legs beside hers, half facing her and half facing the back of the couch, but he manages.

And usually, Allison’s hugs are the sort of hesitant, barely-touching, _polite_ hugs that movie stars give to strangers, or to acquaintances, and her family had never really been an exception to that rule. Usually when she hugged Klaus she would just kind of… drape her arms over his shoulder blades, tuck her chin over his shoulder for half a second, give him a light pat on the back.

Now, though, it feels like she’s trying to squeeze the damn _life_ out of his ribcage, trembling and sobbing with her face hidden somewhere between his neck and his collarbone.

“Hey, it’s okay,” he says for maybe the millionth time. “Panic attacks suck, I know. But it’s okay.”

“That’s not why she’s upset, Klaus,” Five sighs, and the couch dips as he sits on Allison’s other side. Ben folds his forearms over the back of the couch and drops his chin on top, watching all of them with a sympathetic frown on his face.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Klaus huffs. “I know.”

Because of course he knows why she’s upset. He knows why Allison would react to this news with — well, with _panic._

“What are you so worried about, huh?” he asks anyway. He’s crying now, too, just a little, because he can’t really help it when Allison’s falling apart like this. But he swallows it down and keeps his arms wound around her, one hand on the back of her head. He stares off toward the other end of the room, at the painting of wildflowers hanging on the far wall where _dear old Daddy’s_ portrait used to be. “What, just because having powers didn’t work out so great for us?”

Allison bunches up the back of his shirt, and she chokes out, “It ruined my _life—”_

“Hey, hey, hey, I know, I know,” Klaus says. “I mean, of course I know. Look who you’re talking to.” He gulps, his cheek pressed to the top of her head. “Actually, uh… I guess this little committee of Four-Five-Six wasn’t the best way to break the news to you, huh?”

Five snorts a humorless laugh. Ben tilts his head in agreement.

Klaus has his fingers tangled in his sister’s hair, trying to rub comforting little circles on the back of her head with his thumb, and he adds, “Yeah, I mean, we’re kind of the poster children for having our lives ruined by our powers, aren’t we?”

Having their lives ruined as a _direct fucking result_ of their powers, really, is what he wants to say. And for a second all he can think about is the blood spattered infirmary bed and an equally blood spattered seventeen-year-old Luther, shaky and practically catatonic after stumbling home from _that_ mission. He thinks of the two empty seats at the breakfast table, of untouched bedrooms. He thinks of equations scratched into every available space on Five’s walls, of his wide glassy eyes during a real bad PTSD attack. He thinks of pills and back alleys and —

He squeezes his eyes shut, shakes those thoughts away.

Not the time.

“But we turned out okay, didn’t we?” he says into Allison’s hair, giving her a little squeeze. “We did. We’re okay.”

Because it’s true. Klaus is going on his fourth year clean as a whistle, he’s even going to his meetings every once in a while, and he’s gonna knit a whole new wardrobe for everyone in the damn _house_ if he has to. Ben keeps getting on his ass about how he should be a _sponsor,_ about how good he would be at it, and that idea is seeming less and less ridiculous as the months tick by without a relapse. Plus he’s got a handle the ghosts now; he chats with the friendly ones, shoos away or ignores the rest.

It’s not just him, either. These days Ben’s corporeal more often than he isn’t, and he’s smiling more often than not, too. Even Five’s adjusting, in his own way.

Allison takes in another shaky inhale and stammers, “I can’t — _she_ can’t go through that —”

“Woah, woah, hey now, come on,” Klaus says, finally pulling back from the hug so he can really _look_ at his sister, and he gets both hands on either side of her head. He gives her a wide, teary smile, even if she can’t return it just yet. “She’s not. She won’t! I mean, hey, think about it. We had to figure these powers out as scared little kids, right? We had to deal with all of it while the old man was breathing down our _necks,_ always yammering on about our potential and blah, blah, blah, and using all that —” he flaps a hand vaguely, dismissively, before bringing it back to her face — “that _saving the world_ bullshit as an excuse to win the World’s Shittiest Father award for thirty years running. We all know he fucked us up big time, sis, but guess what?”

The miserable look on her face doesn’t go away, but her eyebrows come together with the sort of skepticism that says, _What? What could possibly make this okay?_

Luckily, Klaus has an answer for that.

“The old man isn’t around anymore,” he tells her, lowering his voice like it’s a secret just for them. “He’s kaput, _finité,_ so Claire isn’t gonna have to deal with any of that. You know what she’s got instead?”

He waits a second for dramatic effect, grinning and raising his eyebrows at her.

Ben offers, “A kick-ass mom?”

Allison gives a half-smile at that, and Klaus laughs, nodding. “Yeah, yeah, exactly! A kick-ass mom, and a kick-ass grandma, and a kick-ass aunt, and _five_ kick-ass uncles. Anyone in this house would die before they let anything bad happen to Claire,” he says, swiping a thumb over the tear tracks on her cheek. “Come on, you know that.”

“Obviously,” Five chimes in.

“Yeah, obviously! And Ben would die _again,_ right?”

Klaus leans over just an inch or so to look at Ben, who gives a sagely nod. “No doubt.”

“See?” he asks Allison. “We’d never let anything bad happen to her, and that sure as _hell_ includes all the bad shit _we_ went through. This is our chance to, you know, ‘break the cycle’ and all that jazz. She’s never even gonna have to _use_ these powers if she doesn’t want to. It’ll all be up to her, we’re just gonna… you know, be there for her. She’s gonna be okay. _More_ than okay.”

He leans in a little closer, forces her to meet his eyes.

“We’re not gonna be like him,” he assures her, biting his lip for half a second, but his smile doesn’t waver. At this point he’s no longer even saying it for her benefit; he _feels_ it, all the way down to the marrow of his bones. “We’re gonna do better. We’re gonna _be_ better.”

Allison takes a second to let that sink in, sniffling and then slowly nodding. Like she’s not quite sure that she agrees with that yet, like she can’t quite picture it, but maybe she’s willing to consider it.

Klaus figures that’s about as good as he could have hoped for. He’ll take it.

She grabs a hold of his shirt to pull him in for another hug. This time, though, he feels her reaching out with her other arm to grab onto Five, too, and yank him into both of them — which works, if the startled yelp and the gangly not-so-teenage elbow jabbing into his ribs is any indication. Ben hops over the back of the couch to settle in on Klaus’ other side and wind an arm over Allison’s shoulders, a pleasantly cool and solid presence leaning into both of them, and when Klaus wraps an arm around Five to pin him to Allison’s side, he tolerates it with minimal squirming.

She doesn’t say anything, just clings to all three of them with everything she’s got, still sniffling a little against his shirt.

He thinks the message comes across just fine, anyway.

“Yeah, yeah,” Klaus whispers, smiling and pressing a little kiss to the side of her head. “We love you, too.”

 


	7. one hell of a support system

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Five seeks out advice. Elsewhere, Luther and Diego stake out an abandoned house and discuss home renovations.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yeah we're getting to some actual legitimate plot, but you can pry my "five gets validation and comfort in BUCKETS" side plot out of my cold dead heads okay

 

_June 6th, 2022_

 

Dr. Maria Sanchez has a lot on her mind.

There’s her dog, for one. He threw up all over the kitchen floor this morning, and it wasn’t until she got the text from Rosie an hour ago — _all clear, babe, vet says it was chocolate chip cookies_ — that she was able to scratch “sick dog” off of her list of worries and add “buy a stronger trash can” in its place. There’s also her kids; Jacob is driving himself into a caffeine-fueled pile of stress with SATs and is _so_ gonna hit a wall soon, Maria can feel it. Izzy’s home from school, too, and thanks to that shitstain of a boyfriend she’d been with, Maria and Rosie ended up with a sobbing heartbroken twenty-two-year-old in their bed last night. Maria’s gonna kill him, she _swears_ she is, at least if Rosie doesn’t find the little twerp first.

Then there’s this weird keto diet thing. She, personally, thinks it’s bullshit, but — hey. Solidarity, right? She’s a damn good wife. Rosie somehow got it in her head that she wants to shed ten pounds before their anniversary cruise next month, and she somehow believes that _no carbs_ is anything other than literal Hell-sent torment, and Maria hadn’t wanted her to suffer that torment on her own.

So here she is. With a salad for lunch. With none of the good bits that make a salad worth eating. And a gluten-free dressing.

Lord, she’d kill for a crouton.

And that’s what she’s thinking about — _how much difference would a few croutons make, honestly, maybe the café downstairs has some_ — when the too familiar rending of spacetime sounds from the corner of her office, and a teenage body steps through the opening.

For a moment, all other worries fall to the background. Her heart sinks.

_Shit._

“Five?”

The blue light of his power fades behind him, and he gains his bearings, adjusting the lapels of his blazer and taking a breath. He looks — fine, actually. A little tense, maybe, but not panicking. Not hyperventilating. Hell, he even seems to have gotten some decent sleep since she’s last seen him.

Okay, then. The gears switch.

Worry trickles away, and exasperation takes its place.

“Hey, Maria—”

“Five, what did we talk about?” she asks, gently, with her best _stern Mom_ face that she still feels plenty qualified to give him despite his true age. “If you’re having a panic attack and there’s no one else around to help, and you _really_ need it, then you are more than welcome to use your ability to drop in unannounced. Otherwise you’re supposed to call and make an appointment.”

He cocks his head to the side, regarding her with his brow creased like she’s just suggested that… the sixth dimension doesn’t exist, or time is linear, or something else he’d find equally ridiculous. Then he glances toward the couch and says, “You don’t have another patient right now. You’re on your lunch break.”

“Exactly, Five. I’m on my lunch break.”

“Yeah,” he says, nodding, brows still knit together because he’s still not getting it.

Maria has to restrain herself from pinching the bridge of her nose, and she settles instead for leaning her head into her hand, her thumb pressed to her temple. “Five—”

“Look, I know,” he relents. “I know. But… it’s important.”

She deflates. Marginally.

Then she reminds herself not to make assumptions from that statement alone; important for Five has quite a bit of range. It can mean a shady organization of time-traveling assassins has shown up on his front doorstep. It can mean the entire fabric of reality is at risk of, literally, imploding. But it can also mean _Luther started talking to me about his dating life and I’m seriously considering fratricide if it means never having to hear about it again._

He looks genuinely worried, though. Not panicking, but tense. Antsy.

“Important how, Five?”

And as if to drive home the point home that she does, in fact, know her patient and that he is, in fact, far more worried than he’s letting on, Five answers simply and concisely. No long-winded preamble. No smart comments. Just —

“Claire has powers.”

Maria blinks. “Oh,” she says before she can stop herself. “She does?”

Five nods, worrying his bottom lip between his teeth, staring into space. “Mm-hmm.”

“So you… came here?” Maria asks, eyes fixed on him as she tries to gauge the situation. She knows this verse well: Tread carefully. Don’t imply that he’s being irrational. Don’t point out that he looks frightened. She asks, “You came here to tell me?”

“Well not _just_ to tell you. Obviously.” He rolls his eyes. He keeps one hand on his hip, the other messing up his hair and then absently fixing it again. “I came here because you’re” — he waves vaguely in her direction — “at least the third or fourth smartest person I know. Definitely the only unbiased one.”

“So you came to me for advice.”

“Uh. Sure,” he says, nodding again, frowning at the far wall. He still hasn’t sat down. “Yeah. Advice. We figured it out early this morning, and I mean, it was always a possibility. There’s no reason that whatever it is that gives us our abilities couldn’t be passed down. And — of course we tested it. Before. You know that.”

She does. She remembers, vividly, those early days when Five first met his niece. He’d been a bit of a nervous wreck over her at the time, though he only seemed to show it in the safety of Maria’s office. Not about her potentially having powers, just about _her._ His niece had been a ghost to him for decades, a little girl who was born, lived, and died, all before he’d ever known she existed. He had never interacted with children in is life, not since he’d been one, and even then it had been under… abnormal circumstances.

His nervousness then was _more_ than understandable.

His nervousness now, though, is a bit more nebulous. It’ll take some prodding to reach the root.

“And now we know she does have powers,” he continues, beginning to pace. He walks past the couch and back, never pausing to so much as consider sitting down. “It’s… I mean, I’m a little disappointed in myself for not noticing it earlier. The evidence was everywhere. Her moods are contagious — _actually_ contagious sometimes, though obviously that can be a product of everyday empathy. We’re still not one hundred percent sure about that part. But she always knows how we’re feeling, too. She never says ‘why do you seem scared’ or ‘he looks angry.’ Instead it’s always ‘why _are_ you scared’ and ‘he _is_ angry.’ She just — _knows._ It wasn’t until this morning that I knew for sure, but the clues have been there all this time.”

Maria opens her mouth, then closes it. It doesn’t really matter what happened this morning to make him so sure that Claire has powers. Five is a lot of things, but he’s intelligent. He’s pragmatic. If he claims to know for certain that Claire has powers, then she does. It’s not important how he knows.

“We told Allison,” he says, and now he’s fidgeting as he paces around, the thumb of his right hand pressing into the palm of his left. “Like an hour ago. Klaus and Ben and I, we told her about it. She needed to know.”

“Did she not take it well?”

“Oh, no, definitely not. But we knew she wouldn’t,” he says with a shrug. “She’s fine, though. Now. Klaus talked her down.”

“Okay, so…?”

“I mean, they’re all still kind of freaking out. Allison had an actual panic attack over it, and she _says_ she’s fine, but… I don’t know. Klaus has been freaking out since we figured it out, and Ben’s been freaking out, too. He’s just a little more subtle about it. We’re gonna have a family meeting in, like—” he pulls back his sleeve, checks his watch — _“shit,_ less than three hours. Then we’re gonna tell Vanya and Diego and Luther. It’ll be, you know, a whole _thing.”_

“Are you nervous about the meeting?”

“What?” Five asks, finally looking at her. “No, that’s—” He shakes his head. “I’m not _nervous_ about it. It’s happening. Everyone in the family needs to know. There’s no reason to be nervous about it when it’s a certainty.”

“But you don’t think the others will take it well.”

“No, no. I think Vanya and Diego and Luther will take it just fine. And even if they don’t, we’ll… I don’t know, we’ll handle it,” he insists with another shrug, still pacing back and forth past the couch. “I’m not nervous about it. Really.”

“Then what _are_ you nervous about?”

“What? I’m not,” he says. “I’m not _nervous._ I’m — _thinking._ Brainstorming. I’m not nervous. And I’m definitely not freaking out like the rest of those idiots are.”

Maria wrinkles her nose, tilting her head at him, and he finally stops in his tracks to look at her. His confused _what-are-you-talking-about-I’m-fine_ look shifts into a halfhearted glare.

“I’m not,” he insists, rolling his eyes and resuming his pacing.

“Five, you just teleported, unannounced, into my office to vent and unload all of this, rather than simply waiting until your appointment on Friday. Also,” she adds, directing a pointed look at his feet, “you’re going to wear a track into my carpet if you keep pacing like that.”

He all but stumbles to a stop, opening his mouth to bite back some smart comment, but then it finally dawns on him. He clenches his jaw, glaring at nothing, until the anger bleeds away from his face and his shoulders sag.

“Shit.” He drags both hands over his face, then admits, “I am freaking out, aren’t I?”

“Afraid so.”

He keeps his hands on his face and lets out a low groan.

“What is it that concerns you, Five? Are you worried about telling the others?”

“No, I’m not worried about telling the others,” he mutters into his hands. “I _told_ you that.”

“Is it the revelation that your abilities can be passed down?”

“No.”

“Are you worried about Allison? That she’s not as ‘fine’ as she claims to be?”

He shakes his head.

“Then what?”

Five drags his hands up, tugs his fingers through his hair for a second, then lets his hands link together behind his neck. His mouth is a thin frown, his eyes on her and all at once exhausted and agitated and distraught.

“Claire,” he admits, his voice half a whisper.

Maria nods. “You’re concerned about Claire?”

“I’m —” he cuts himself off, puffs out his breath slowly like a deflating balloon. He drops his hands from his neck and finally takes the few steps to the couch and falls back onto it. “I’m concerned about Claire, yeah. But I’m more… concerned _for_ her. I think.”

“Why is that?”

He stares down at his hands. “She has… powers.”

“So do you,” Maria says, shrugging one shoulder. “So do all of your brothers and sisters.”

“Yeah, no shit, and look at us!” Five responds, looking up at her and waving a hand over himself in demonstration. “A bunch of emotionally repressed _assholes_ with more than enough issues between them to fill a whole damn psych textbook.”

“Now, Five, you know you’ve all made a lot of progress since—”

“Yeah, _progress,”_ Five says through gritted teeth. He shakes his head, shrugs, lets out one of those angry laughs he has the tendency to do when he’s really upset. “That doesn’t change the fact that our lives were _shit._ I mean, Jesus, I still can’t eat anything that’s been through the toaster because the smell of smoke makes me feel like I’m _suffocating,_ and you _know_ that’s pretty damn low on the list of shit I can’t handle anymore.” He throws a hand in the air, continuing, “Vanya spent her whole existence without _feeling_ and nearly caused the Apocalypse when she finally could, Klaus lost half his life to drugs and still can’t sleep with the door shut, Diego barely ever sleeps at _all_ because he’s had nightmares about drowning every night since he was a kid and he thinks we’re actually stupid enough that we don’t _know_ about it. Allison ruined her entire life rumoring her way into everything she ever wanted because she was never taught not to, Luther was never taught not to throw people around rooms to get what _he_ wanted and was abandoned on the goddamn moon for four years and he genuinely never saw a problem with any of that until a few years ago, and Ben — Jesus, Ben used his powers and used them and used them until they _fucking killed him.”_

He drops his head into his hands, tugging them through his hair again, his shoulders heaving.

Maria watches him, waits, thinks.

There’s a lot to unpack there. None of it is new, but it’s all been dredged up by something that _is_ new, and Maria takes a second to follow that thread back. Claire, with powers. Five, a worried uncle.

That’s far more normal than he probably knows, far more normal than he’d ever willingly admit.

“All of those things are true,” she says, slowly, “and they wouldn’t have occurred if you all hadn’t had these abilities, yes. But it wasn’t only your abilities that caused all of that.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know,” Five murmurs into his hands. “Klaus said the same thing.”

“Did he?”

He nods, lifting his head out of his hands to direct a miserable look her way. “I know that’s what you’re gonna say. It was all Dad. He shoved those pills on Vanya and made her feel like shit her whole life. He never taught Luther or Allison or Ben or _any_ of us anything close to restraint — in fact he actively discouraged it. He put every single one of us through some kind of special training that messed us up for the rest of our lives. And Dad’s gone now, and we’re not… we’re not _him,_ so Claire should be fine, right? She’s in the clear. We’re gonna ‘break the cycle,’ or whatever. Everything’s great.”

“And you don’t believe that.”

Five, staring down at his hands, mutters, “I can’t.”

“Why not?”

He chews on the inside of his cheek, thinking. Then he says, “I jumped for the first time when I was four years old. You know that?”

“I do.”

“Four years old,” he repeats, nodding, staring into space. “Back then it was all instinct and no math, but I could feel out where I wanted to go. I wanted to get on top of the counter, so I’d end up on top of the counter. And I kept… pushing and pushing and pushing. It wasn’t because the old man was pushing me. It was because I _wanted_ to see how far I could go. I wanted to test my limits. That was all just — _me,_ a stupid precocious kid pushing things too far.”

Maria makes a face, but she elects not to remind him to stop calling himself stupid for a mistake he made nearly fifty years ago. She knows he knows. And that’s not the most pressing issue at the moment.

“That’s the thing. Without Dad, everyone might have been a little better off. Maybe. A little,” Five admits with a shrug. “But I still would have time traveled. Without Dad, I still would have done it.”

“And you’re worried that Claire will do something like that?”

“Not — not _that,_ no, because she can’t do what I can do,” Five says. “But that’s not the _point._ Kids aren’t meant to be able to do the things we can do. Even without Dad, Allison would never have known not to rumor people into giving her whatever the hell she wanted. Klaus would still be surrounded by dead people all the time and probably still would’ve gotten into drugs. Ben still would’ve died. I still would have time traveled, and — yeah, I mean, I stand by what I told you before, I wouldn’t trade what I did for anything. The world would have ended if I’d never time traveled, and I wouldn’t have been able to do a thing about it. But…”

He gulps, staring at some vague point on her desk.

“But she doesn’t deserve that. She doesn’t. Jesus, she doesn’t deserve anything even _close_ to that.”

Maria frowns. On instinct she wants to say, _You know none of you deserved it, either, right?_

But she doesn’t. They’ve been down that road before. Instead she asks, “So, you’re worried she’ll misuse her powers in some way? Because she’s a kid and she doesn’t know any better?”

He sighs again, deep and heavy, and drops his head back into his hands.

“She’s a good kid,” he murmurs. “But she’s so _young._ She doesn’t understand boundaries yet. She doesn’t even know that not everybody can tell what everyone around them is feeling, let alone _influence_ what they’re feeling. And she’s —” he huffs, curls his fingers into his hair — “a really, really good kid. She doesn’t… _deserve_ to have to deal with all this.”

Maria waits. She lets his words settle with the weight they deserve; it’s perfectly understandable, as far as she’s concerned. Then she asks, “Five, do you want my honest advice?”

She watches as he lifts his head from his hands again. He takes a slow breath, then bites his lip and nods.

“Caring about the wellbeing of a child is… a trip,” Maria says, smiling, thinking automatically of the day they picked up little baby Izzy from the foster home, how small she’d looked, how fragile. “Being a parent — or, in your case, an uncle — is the wildest crash course in decision making I’ve ever experienced. You can ask Allison, I’m sure she’ll say the same. Everything you do can affect the rest of that little kid’s life, and there’s nothing in the world you care about more, so the stakes are as high as they’ve ever been. But you will never have any way of knowing what every _right decision_ is. Sometimes you just have to go with your gut and hope for the best. Sometimes all you can do is _be_ there, be the support system they need, and let the pieces fall where they may. I won’t lie to you, Five, it’s more than a little terrifying.”

He still has that miserable, lost look in his eyes, but he offers half a wry smile and says, “You’re really selling this, you know that?”

She laughs. “My point is, it sounds to me like, powers or no powers, Claire needs what every little kid needs. She’s young and doesn’t understand boundaries yet, so she needs her family to teach her. She needs support. Guidance.”

“I don’t…” Five gulps. Shakes his head. “I don’t know if any of us are qualified to give that. Except maybe Allison. Definitely not me.”

“Well, it’s perfectly fine to leave most of the parenting to Claire’s actual parents,” Maria says, tilting her head. “In fact you probably _should._ But a support _system_ is more than just one or two people, ideally. Claire can do something no one else can, and that can be frightening. So tell me, Five, what better place is there for her than with her mother and her aunt and her uncles? What better place is there for a little girl to learn to understand that she can do something that no one else can do, than in a house full of people who love her, who _also_ know what it’s like to be able to do things that no one else can do?”

He still doesn’t look convinced, Maria thinks, but that’s okay. She wasn’t going to ease all of his worries with a few well chosen words. It’ll take time.

“Look, like I said, you’ll never know if you’re doing everything right. That’s just how it is, and I’m well aware that it’s not something you’re used to dealing with. No amount of probability maps can tell you how to best raise a child. It’s…” she hesitates, searching for the right word.

“A crapshoot?”

Maria gives a surprised laugh at that, and she nods. “That is surprisingly accurate, actually.”

Five returns her smile, though it doesn’t quite reach his eyes and falls away just as quickly.

“I just…” he says, shaking his head again. “I don’t even know where to _start.”_

“Five,” Maria says, leaning forward. “Listen to me. I want you to leave here today knowing two things, okay? Just two.” She holds up two fingers, then puts one down. “One, you are giving yourself far too little credit. You’ve loved that little girl for almost _fifty years,_ since you first read her name in a dusty old magazine at the end of the world. You’ll figure this out. But more importantly —” and she holds up the second finger — “this is not your sole responsibility to handle. Everyone else in that house loves her, too. Not to mention the whole other side of her family back home in California. If you ask me, she’s already got one hell of a support system.”

“But that doesn’t feel like enough,” Five says, and Maria wilts a bit in sympathy. “None of it. I mean, that… It _can’t_ be enough.”

She wants to ask, _How do you know?_

She wants to say, _It’s more than any of you had, isn’t it? How can you know, then, that’s it not enough?_

“Speaking as a parent,” she says instead. “Trust me on this. It’s enough.”

 

 

In another life, Luther thinks, he might have made a half decent detective.

Maybe.

Then again, the only reason he’s thinking that now is because of how bizarrely comfortable he is while sitting on a stake out — something that is _supposedly_ the most awful, mind-numbing task that a detective ever has to do. So he’s read, anyway. According to every mystery novel and buddy cop story and action adventure book he’s ever read, these things are supposed to suck. It’s why he offered to come in the first place, to help lessen the load for Diego.

But he’s finding that he actually kind of _likes_ it.

He knows that those four years alone had a way of messing with him, a little bit. Four years is plenty of time to get used to things. It’s plenty of time to rewire the brain. By the time he returned, silence had become agonizing and oddly normal all at once while even the _idea_ of socialization could send his pulse skyrocketing, and human contact was something he desperately needed — _touch starved,_ one of his books had called it — but flinched away from all the same.

He’s better now than he was then. Leaps and bounds better, really. He’s made a lot of progress since he got back.

Doesn’t mean he doesn’t still have an odd relationship with noise, with activity, with being around too many people for too long a stretch. Doesn’t mean he can’t still get a little overwhelmed sometimes.

But this? Sitting in the passenger seat of Diego’s car, where there’s no need to fill the silence with words but it’s not totally _silent_ either, where the lulls in conversation blend into a comfortable quiet only broken by the rustling of papers and the crinkling of chip bags and Diego shifting in his seat every so often?

Yeah. This, Luther can handle.

So maybe he wouldn’t have been a detective in another lifetime, since in another lifetime he wouldn’t have ever gone to the moon. Or he hopes he wouldn’t have, anyway.

But that’s fine, he thinks. Detective work is Diego’s thing. Luther is perfectly content to stick to his writing and his home renovations and, on occasion, tagging along for a stake out or two.

He yawns, flipping through the police reports in his lap again.

The kid they’re looking for, Nikhil Burman, has a few marks on his record. Not a whole lot, but an impressive amount for a fifteen-year-old. Breaking and entering, theft, and one count of attempted kidnapping that Luther first assumed was a typo — how on Earth does a _kid_ get arrested for attempted _kidnapping_ — until he read further into it and found that Nikhil had been trying to take his little sister from a foster home.

Understandable, in Luther’s opinion. Still technically _very_ illegal.

Though if he’s honest, the more he reads the more Luther hopes this kid isn’t who they’re looking for. Because if he is, Luther really doesn’t like the idea of sending him to the authorities.

“Yo, did we grab jalapeño chips?”

“Mm-hmm,” Luther nods distractedly, grabbing the bag of snacks from beside his feet and handing it over without looking up from the report.

 _“Sweet,”_ Diego says, already rifling through the bag.

They fall into silence again, and Luther flips the report over as if maybe he’ll find more information that he somehow missed before. No such luck. There’s just an obituary paperclipped to the file underneath, the kid’s mom smiling warmly up at him from a black-and-white photo. It was two Decembers ago, and the file beneath her obituary details the whole thing, providing a grainy photo of a snow-dusted overturned sedan blocked off with police tape. The same warm smiling face from the obituary is shown in the coroner’s report, looking like she might be sleeping if not for the nasty wound along her hairline.

Luther doesn’t look at that picture again. He’s read the file four times already for lack of anything better to do, anyway.

There’s no more information on Nikhil, though. He’s slipped out of every foster home that’s taken him in. He’s dropped out of school. There’s nothing in these files that could indicate any proficiency with surveillance equipment. Luther knows the kid’s school records are in this folder somewhere — he’s read them, too — and Nikhil’s grades in computer sciences were… not the best.

Diego’s right, it really doesn’t seem like this kid could have pulled this job off. Not alone.

Again Luther yawns, folding up the file and returning his gaze to the little row of houses across the street. Going on four hours now, and still no movement. No movement they care about, anyway.

Then he says, “I was thinking.”

Diego’s hunting through a bag of jalapeño chips for the best one, his eyes fixed on the inside of the bag. He grunts to confirm he’s listening.

“What about the old training rooms behind the courtyard?”

“What about ‘em?”

“One of them’s got reinforced steel walls, remember? So Ben could train without taking the whole place down.”

Through a mouthful of chips, Diego murmurs, “Mm-hmm.”

Luther keeps his eyes ahead. There’s two entrances to the house that used to belong to Amara Burman, plus a fire escape, but from this distance it’s easy to keep all three in his sights at the same time. He continues, “Well, I was thinking, what if we renovated them?”

“Yeah?”

Luther shrugs. “Yeah, I mean, I’m just going to keep ripping punching bags out of the ceiling unless we get a stronger ceiling. Plus I’m sure Vanya could use a little more space for when she practices. We could tear down a few walls, build up the remaining ones with the same steel from Ben’s old training room. I’d have a place to work out, and Vanya could let loose a little more if she’s got a bigger space with walls that don’t… you know, come down as easy.”

He glances over at Diego, who’s now tipping the chip bag over to funnel the remaining crumbs into his mouth.

“I dunno,” Luther says. “Just a thought.”

Diego swallows, clears his throat. “Nah, yeah, why not? We’ve been meaning to get rid of those old rooms anyway.”

“Exactly.”

“Not like anyone’s using them.”

Luther nods, looking back toward the row of houses. There’s a dark green minivan newly parked outside the neighbor’s, plus a mail truck idling a few doors down. A few people have walked by, but no one matching the kid’s description.

“We’ll have to figure out what kind of metal it was,” Diego adds. “And probably use more of it, if Vanya’s gonna be using her powers there.”

“I don’t know, if it was enough for Ben…”

“Ben never blew up the moon.”

“Well.” Luther tilts his head. “Technically Vanya never did, either.”

“Oh, don’t timeline bullshit me, you know what I meant.”

Luther grins. “Yeah, yeah, I do. And I mean, the sturdier the better, I guess. She never really gets to use her powers all that much, even with the training sessions she has with Five. She still has to hold back, and she acts like it doesn’t bother her, but—”

His voice abruptly cuts off.

 _Wait,_ he thinks, leaning forward and staring wide-eyed at the row of houses. What the hell was that?

That had to have been a trick of the light, right? But for a second, he thought…

“Uh. Luther?”

Before Luther can answer, the minivan’s alarm goes off.

“Hey,” Diego says, eyeing him down, his voice still calm and level. “Chill, bro. It’s a car alarm.”

“Uh — yeah,” Luther says, shaking his head. “Yeah. I know.”

“What, did you see something?”

Luther hesitates, eyes ahead. A middle aged woman is jogging out of the neighbor’s house, clicking a remote at it until the alarm finally quiets down. But he could have sworn he’d seen… something. A weird sort of flash, a distortion of light. He definitely saw the mail truck rock a bit like it’d been shoved from the other side. The minivan, too, which must have been what set off the alarm. But that could’ve been a coincidence, maybe. Anyone can bump into a minivan and rock it a bit, right?

And the weird flash… no, definitely his eyes playing a trick on him, he thinks, an effect of staring at the same thing for so damn long.

“I don’t… think so?” Luther finally answers. “No.”

Diego’s eyes narrow. He’s clearly itching to prod, and Luther considers explaining it to him. It was probably nothing, but…

What had Diego said this morning? About trusting your gut?

But then, before he can say anything, a flash of bright blue lights up the rearview mirror, and a voice from the back seat cuts in:

“Hey—”

“God _damn_ it,” Diego hisses.

“Jesus, Five,” Luther says, shooting a look over his shoulder. Diego’s already got one hand on his knife, and he’s rolling his eyes now as he lets it go. “You’re gonna give Diego a heart attack one of these days if you keep that up.”

Diego scoffs. “He is not—”

“Yeah, yeah, it’s good to see you, too,” Five says, totally unfazed. Both of their seats tilt back a bit as he leans his elbows onto them, his fingers laced together, eyes straight ahead. “How’s the stake out going?”

“It’s, uh—”

“Just _swell,”_ Diego grumbles, shaking his head. “What do you want?”

Five makes a face, opens his hands up. “What, am I not allowed to innocently check in on my idiot baby brothers?”

“No,” Diego and Luther answer in unison.

Five rolls his eyes, but he doesn’t argue it, which Luther thinks is only because he really _can’t_ argue it. _Innocent_ and _Five_ don’t really fit together in the same sentence. Plus he only tends to call them his baby brothers when he’s agitated, so that might have something to do with it, too.

“Whatever,” Five says. “We’re having a family meeting in an hour.”

And just like that, all concerns about the strange rocking minivan and the weird trick of the light dissipate, and a new worry sinks into Luther’s gut. A family meeting called by anyone other than him usually doesn’t mean anything good. Everyone else tends to avoid those meetings like the plague unless it’s something really… well, dire.

Diego seems to think the same thing, if the look he exchanges with Luther is anything to go by.

“What’s going on?” Diego asks.

“Well, you’ll find out in an hour, won’t you?” Five asks. “Isn’t that the whole point of a family meeting?”

Luther asks, “Is everyone okay?”

Five huffs. _“Yes,_ Number One. Everyone is okay. And _no,_ Number Two,” he adds, because Diego had been opening his mouth to ask something else, “I am not going to just tell you what it’s about. That would defeat the entire purpose of a family meeting.”

“But—”

“Relax,” Five says, softening incrementally. “No one’s hurt, and it’s nothing crazy. Er… well, it’s nothing _bad,_ anyway. Certainly not apocalyptic.” He pats the back of their seats once, then twice. “One hour.”

He leans back into the backseat, presumably to leave, but he hesitates.

“Oh, and it’s Klaus’ night to cook,” he adds. “So maybe pick up some takeout on the way home.”

With that last parting word, he vanishes in another flash of blue light, and Diego sighs, sinking back into his seat.

“Alright, whatever. I’m calling it anyway,” he says, shaking his head as he balls up the snack bag and tosses it into the back seat. “Not like I really expected to find the kid today.”

Luther nods. Still, he sends one last furtive look toward the house. Nothing out of the ordinary, nothing whatsoever, just a lonesome green minivan and a mail truck finally pulling out into the street. Even the house they were watching looked totally undisturbed, doors and windows shut tight. Maybe he did imagine it after all.

And really, even if he didn’t, they’ve got bigger issues at the moment.

“What do you think it’s about?”

Diego shifts the car into reverse. “Dunno. If the old man thinks it’s nothing crazy, though, it’s probably nothing crazy. He’d have blinked us home instead of waiting otherwise.”

“Yeah, I guess that’s true.”

Diego twists around, one arm over the back of Luther’s seat as he peers through the rear windshield and maneuvers them out of their space. “Think I’m feeling Chinese,” he adds. “What about you, big guy?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> what's this? a plot line? other than claire discovering her powers? hmm
> 
> next up: a family meeting and, of course, MORE FLUFF


	8. another fact of the universe

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The family meeting goes... surprisingly well, actually.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> remember how i promised fluff, fluff, and more fluff?
> 
> yeah, here ya go babes

 

_“What?”_

Vanya’s well aware that her jaw has dropped, her wide eyes fixed on Klaus and then Ben and then Five. On her left, Diego’s just choked on his lo mein, and he’s busy coughing into the crook of his arm while Luther, sitting on her right, just stares, looking as openly dumbstruck and speechless as Vanya feels.

“Powers,” Klaus repeats, like Vanya actually meant _what did you say I think I missed it_ and not _what in the world do you mean Claire has powers._ “Found out just this morning.” He waves his hands in the air and smiles. “Ta-da!”

Vanya shakes her head. “Klaus, what do you mean, she has powers?”

“But she can’t, can she?” Luther asks. “I thought we already checked.”

“Yeah,” Diego agrees, his voice a little rough as he clears his throat one last time. “We did. She tried to rumor me forever ago and it didn’t work. So what do you mean—”

“She doesn’t have Allison’s powers,” Five clarifies. “She has her own.”

Luther gapes. “Her _own?”_

Vanya finally regains enough presence of mind to close her mouth, and she gulps, placing her own box of fried rice down on the coffee table. Beside her, Diego hesitates for only a beat before he launches into a stream of questions — what exactly are her powers, how safe is it, how safe is Claire, how do Klaus and Ben and Five know about it in the first place — but for some reason Vanya can’t… quite hear what the answers are. She wrings her hands together in her lap, trying to shake the strange buzz that’s just settled in her inner ear while her brothers’ voices blend and clamor over each other somewhere far away.

Oddly, Luther seems to notice.

Or maybe not so oddly, she thinks. Since the days of the Notpocalypse, Luther has always ping ponged between hovering over her like an awkward mother hen and even more awkwardly attempting to give her space, and he never quite figured out where to settle on that scale. Maybe today he’s leaning toward the former.

He glances down at her, works his jaw a bit like he wants to say something, but evidently he decides against it. Instead he returns his attention to Diego and the others, only leaning into her a bit without any words. A solid, steady presence.

Vanya takes a slow breath. The buzzing dulls to a hum.

“— that I was there,” Ben’s continuing, “and we—”

“You’re _sure_ you weren’t visible?” Diego asks.

“One hundred percent certain,” Five says.

Klaus laces his fingers together in front of him and shrugs. “We’re totally sure, brother dear. Wasn’t sparing a bit of effort.”

“And those were her _exact_ words,” Diego says, leaning forward with his forearms on his knees. “She knew because you knew?”

“She said, and I quote, ‘because you know he’s here, duh,’” Five says. “Verbatim. So—”

“Does Claire know?” Vanya speaks up.

Instantly all eyes are on her, and Vanya does her best not to shrink beneath their stares. Even to this day, their undivided attention tends to be a little uncomfortable; she’s not sure it ever _won’t_ be uncomfortable, but at least the feeling’s easier to shake off these days. Especially now when she’s got much bigger concerns.

Claire just discovered she has powers.

None of them had expected that she would.

 _Claire_ had never expected that she would.

It’s Five who answers. “Allison’s telling her now.”

 _“Right_ now?” Luther asks, pointing vaguely up in the direction of Allison’s bedroom.

Five nods.

“Guess that explains why she got to check out of the family meeting,” Diego mutters, massaging his temple.

“So, what,” Luther says, “we’re thinking she can… tell what people are feeling? Read minds?”

“Almost definitely not the latter,” Five says. “We’d have known about it much, much earlier if that were the case.”

“But feelings, yep,” Klaus answers, finally taking a seat on the floor beside Ben and folding his legs under the coffee table. He grabs the nearest box of take out without, apparently, checking to see what it is before he digs in with a pair of chopsticks. Then through a mouthful of what looks like barbecue spare ribs, he adds, “Like some kind of extreme empathy.”

Ben nods and adds, “And she might be able to influence feelings, too. We’re about fifty-fifty on that.”

“The hell you mean fifty-fifty?” Diego asks.

“He means fifty-fifty,” Five says. “We’re not sure if and how much she can influence what other people are feeling. All we know right now, for certain, is that she can sense it.”

“So how do we find out?” Luther asks. “Do we—?”

 _“We_ don’t do anything,” Five cuts him off, though it feels directed at everyone with the stern look he sends at every single one of them. “Until today Claire had no idea that what she can do is any different from what _anyone_ can do. She had no idea it was anything out of the ordinary. She thought she was just like everyone else, and finding out otherwise can be—” and Vanya doesn’t miss that he shoots a quick, furtive glance her way — “a little scary. So what _we_ are going to do, is nothing. Not until we know what Claire wants.”

Diego raises an eyebrow. “What Claire wants?”

“Yeah,” Ben chimes in. “She’s a kid, sure, but she’s not a toddler, either. She can make her own decisions about where she wants to go with it.”

“Well… I mean, what if she wants to learn how to _use_ her powers?” Luther asks. “It’s not like any of us even know how it works.”

Five shrugs. “I’ll do some reading. Her power must have some kind of scientific backing. And I figured out how _my_ powers work on my own, no thanks to Dad.” He rolls his eyes. “Figured out a precise time jump, too, no thanks to _anyone,”_ he adds with a tilt of his head, in a way that sounds more like a statement of fact than a complaint or a brag. “And I worked out how Vanya’s powers work, and Klaus’ — and let’s not forget that _both_ of your powers are rooted in emotion, too. If I figured that out, I can figure this out. Then, if she wants someone to teach her, I’ll do it, just like I’ve been doing with Vanya.”

“And if she doesn’t?” Luther asks.

Ben says, “Then she doesn’t.”

Klaus gives a sagely nod.

Five nods, too. “She gets to decide what she does, whatever that ends up being. We’re just the support system.”

“So if she doesn’t want to learn how to use her powers, we just… ignore it?” Luther asks, making a face like he can’t picture any of them doing that. Vanya finds she can’t help agreeing.

“More or less,” Five says. “If she doesn’t want to deal with it, she doesn’t have to. Allison can teach her boundaries and consent just like any parent would with any ordinary kid, and it’ll be up to her to make sure Claire doesn’t abuse her powers, but then… that’s it.”

Diego snorts. “You’re serious.”

“Yes, Diego,” Five says, frowning at him. “We’re not gonna make her do anything she doesn’t—”

“No, that’s not what I meant,” Diego cuts him off, and there’s a grin tugging at the corner of his mouth as he shakes his head. “Man, you guys really don’t get kids, huh?”

At that, _everyone_ turns to look at him, not just Five.

Luther frowns. “What are you talking about?”

“Ex-squeeze me, I get kids just fine, _thank you,”_ Klaus argues, again through a mouthful of barbecue spare ribs. “I hang out with Claire all the time.”

“That’s one kid, dumbass,” Diego says, though the insult lacks any bite when he’s still got that knowing smile on his face. He opens his mouth to say something else, but at the sound of an odd _thump_ upstairs, he hesitates, listening as there’s some commotion from the direction of Allison’s bedroom. Footsteps, quick and light but still plenty to make these old floors creak. His smile grows a bit.

“Actually, you know what?” he says, leaning back. “Bet you’re gonna see what I mean in a second.”

They all listen to the racket of what _must_ be Claire hurrying down the staircase, and then the unmistakable sound of Allison following close behind with her loudly clicking heels, shouting after her.

“Claire, honey, _careful,_ watch your step—!”

When Claire speaks, it’s preceded by one of her trademark delighted squeals that nearly breaks the sound barrier, and then:

“UNCLE KLAUS UNCLE DIEGO UNCLE FIVE UNCLE BEN UNCLE LUTHER AUNTIE VANYA—!”

Half a second later she barrels into the living room, a blur of a bright yellow sundress and dark curls and light-up sneakers.

“Did you hear?! Did you hear, did you hear, did you _HEAR?!”_ she screams, rounding the couch at a dead sprint and nearly bowling over Klaus. She grabs him by the shoulders and shakes him, just as Allison stumbles in through the living room doors with her hands on her knees, trying to catch her breath. “I have POWERS!”

Klaus lets out a startled laugh, but before he can even answer Claire has already moved on.

“Uncle Five, Uncle Ben, Auntie Vanya, I have POWERS! I have real life superpowers!” she shouts. Then, for apparently no reason except to expend some energy, she starts sprinting in a wide arc around the perimeter of the room. “I have powers, I have powers, I have powers, I have powers—!”

In the midst of her headlong race around the living room, Diego jumps up, rounding the back of the couch in the opposite direction to meet her on the other side. She lets out another high-pitched squeal as he crouches down and scoops her up into his arms.

“Uncle Diego, Uncle Diego, Uncle Diego!” she yells, wrapping her arms around his neck and attempting to shake him with each repetition of his name. “Did you _hear?”_

“I think everyone did,” Ben murmurs, smiling up at her.

Diego hitches her up higher on his hip, grinning wide, and Vanya watches them, trying to gauge for the first time whether the feelings swelling up in her chest are her own or whether they’re an effect of these powers Claire supposedly has. There’s happiness there that echoes Claire’s, but it’s mostly relief, Vanya thinks. Relief, and love, and the sort of bemused fondness she always feels around her niece.

No, she thinks. All of that definitely feels like it’s her own.

“I know, is that _crazy,_ or what?” Diego asks her. “You got superpowers just like the rest of us, huh, kid?”

“Yeah! I wanna be a superhero! I need to come up with a cool superhero name first, and maybe make a superhero costume, too —” she gasps like she’s forgotten that until just this second, and she twists in Diego’s arms to look back toward Klaus. “Uncle Klaus, can you help me make a superhero costume?”

Klaus opens his mouth to answer, but again, she’s already moved on before he gets a chance.

“I could wear a _cape_ made out of  _purple yarn_ and maybe a wizard hat too since my powers are kinda like magic, and then I can be a part of the Umbrella Academy just like you guys! And I can save people and go on adventures and it’s gonna be _so cool_ and—”

“Claire,” Allison cuts in, forever exasperated. “What did I just get done saying? You’re not old enough yet to go on those kind of missions yet, baby.”

With that last word Allison directs a _very_ pointed look at the rest of them, and Luther clears his throat.

“Uh, yup,” he says. “There’s an age requirement. You have to wait until you’re thir—” Allison glares at him, and he course corrects — “six… uh, eighteen? Eighteen. Yeah.”

“Nice recovery, Number One,” Five mutters under his breath.

Claire pouts. “But _Mom—”_

“Woooah, hey, now,” Diego says, easily cutting through her complaints because he’s still carrying her. “You wanna learn how to use your superpowers and train them, you can go right ahead. But no missions until you’re older. That’s a hard rule, kid. Not buts about it.”

“Besides, Claire,” Luther adds, “it takes a lot of practice to be ready for saving people.”

“But—”

“What, you think we all went on missions before we trained up, honey bunch?” Klaus asks, pointing at her with his chopsticks. “You gotta make sure you get the hang of it. You don’t want any accidents to happen, right?”

None of them, of course, mention the fact that their _training_ had begun when they were far younger than Claire is now, much less the fact that their first real mission had been at the tender age of thirteen. And as jealous as Vanya had been then — as horribly, poisonously jealous as she’d been for _decades_ — the thought of Claire doing something as dangerous as that in as little as five years makes her stomach turn. She knows she’s not alone in that.

Claire blows a raspberry, rolling her eyes. “I _guess.”_

“That’s the spirit, kid,” Diego says.

“We’ll all help you practice, too, Claire,” Luther tells her. “And Uncle Five is gonna help you learn how your powers work and everything.”

“That’s right,” Five says.

Allison nods and adds, “See, baby? That way when you do get older, you’ll be nice and ready to use your powers like a real superhero. Sound good?”

Claire continues to pout, ever the mini drama queen that her mom had been at that age, and then she shrugs and drops her head sideways onto Diego’s shoulder.

“Hey, I’ll tell you what!” Klaus speaks up, as incapable as ever of seeing Claire anything less than ecstatic. “If you’re really good and you listen to your Mom and your Uncle Five and everybody else, and you practice your superpowers like they tell you to, and you don’t complain about having to wait til you’re eighteen to go on dangerous superhero adventures, then…” he taps a finger to his chin, making a real show of thinking it over, “… then we’ll do _whatever_ you wanna do for a _whole day.”_

Claire lifts her head a little bit. “Like what?”

“Well, if I give you ideas then it’s not whatever you wanna do, silly,” Klaus says with a smile, leaning his elbows on the coffee table and propping up his chin in his hands. “We can go somewhere fun and have our _own_ adventure, what do you say?”

Ben asks, “If we could go anywhere for a whole day, kiddo, where would you want it to be?”

She shrugs again, looking down and playing with a frayed thread on the collar of Diego’s shirt. “I dunno. Maybe the beach?”

“The beach sounds great,” Vanya says.

A tiny smile returns to Claire’s face. “Can I get choco-pops when we go, too?”

 _“Pssh,”_ Klaus says, flapping a hand in the air. “Duh. It’s not a beach trip without _choco-pops._ What kind of amateur do you take me for?”

“Klaus, have you ever even been to the beach?” Allison asks, raising an eyebrow. “Actually, wait, hold on. Have _any_ of you been to the beach? Raise your hands if you’ve been to the beach.”

Vanya raises a hand. She’d been a few times, always by herself, just to sit and write and listen to the waves. She watches as Klaus raises his hand, too, and Ben, presumably because he’s accompanied Klaus _everywhere_ he’s gone in the last decade and a half.

But that’s it, other than Claire.

“Claire, honey, I know _you’ve_ been to the beach,” Allison says with a smile. “Okay, and how many of you own bathing suits?”

Vanya drops her hand. Ben keeps his up — and how her perpetually hoodie-clad brother has access to a bathing suit when he’s a ghost, Vanya almost doesn’t want to ask. Klaus keeps his hand up, too, and Claire raises hers even higher.

“Okay,” Allison says, running a hand over her face. “Alright. I’ll have to do some shopping, but I think that sounds like a good trade. Claire, if you’re a good girl, and you listen to the grown ups about your powers, and you don’t complain about having to wait until you’re eighteen to go on missions, then as a reward we’ll all go to the beach in… how about a week? Does that work for everyone?”

She looks around at all of them, and there’s a general murmur of assent. It’s not like any of them have strict nine-to-five jobs or thriving social lives, after all.

“Okay! Next Monday, then,” Allison decides. “You gotta be on your best behavior, though, Claire. Do we have a deal?”

Claire smiles again, nodding vigorously. “Deal!”

“Well! Now that _that’s_ settled,” Klaus says, jumping up and clapping his hands together. “This is cause for a _celebration,_ me thinks. Group trip to get ice cream?”

“Klaus,” Vanya says, “she just had ice cream like three hours ago.”

“But Vanya, dearest sister, _I_ didn’t,” Klaus answers without hesitation, like he’d had that response prepared before she’d even spoken. “And besides, what kind of uncle would I _be_ if I let this momentous occasion pass without proper celebration in the form of some frozen dairy treats, hmm?”

“He’s got a point,” Ben says.

Klaus points animatedly at Ben. “Exactly! Our niece has superpowers. Ergo, ice cream!”

“That’s some rock solid logic if I’ve ever heard it,” Diego says. “Mom? What’s the verdict?”

Allison shrugs. “Why not?”

“Alright, what do you say, kid?” Diego asks. “You feeling ice cream, round two?”

“Yeah! I got strawberry last time with rainbow sprinkles but _this_ time I want to get chocolate with cookie crumbs on it.”

“You are truly an ice cream connoisseur, my dear,” Klaus says, striding past them and blowing a kiss in her direction. He keeps on walking right past Allison toward the living room doors, waving a hand and beckoning the rest of them to follow. “Let’s get moving, children! The car ain’t gonna drive itself! Benny boy, you’re gonna have to be intangible, and let’s say… Vanya can sit on my lap, and Fivey, you can sit on—”

“Nope,” Five cuts him off. “No way, I’m out. I’ve got some reading to do, anyway.”

He disappears in a ripple of blue, presumably to reappear in the library, and Vanya makes a mental note to grab an extra mint chocolate chip for him when they leave. The rest of them all start filing out the living room doors, following behind Klaus. He and Ben and Diego and Claire make up the front of the pack while Vanya and Luther and Allison trail behind.

Diego says, “Klaus, you know we can just take two cars.”

“Come on, where’s your sense of _adventure,_ Diego?”

“Yeah, Uncle Diego,” Claire giggles, “where’s your sense of _adventure?”_

“Oh, you two’re teaming up on me now, huh?”

“Nothing wrong with picking the winning side,” Klaus says.

“Just saying, Claire, it’s a weird decision siding with Uncle Klaus when I’m still carrying your heavy butt.”

He fakes tripping forward, letting Claire drop a few inches so she screams and giggles and latches onto his neck even tighter.

Luther sighs. “You know, I really should fix up the van one of these days.”

“What, the one from our old missions?” Allison asks, making a briefly grossed out face. “That thing was old even back _then._ Plus I don’t think the engine’s been started since before Claire was born.”

“Well, yeah, but if we fix it up, it would be enough to hold all eight of us whenever he want to go anywhere,” Luther says.

“Including the beach!” Klaus shouts from ahead of them.

Claire yells, “Yeah, including the beach!”

“Including the beach,” Luther repeats with a nod.

Diego looks over his shoulder, raising an eyebrow at Luther. “Since when do you know anything about cars, bro?”

“Uh… I don’t,” Luther admits with a shrug. “But how hard can it be?”

“Yeah!” Klaus agrees. “How hard can it _be,_ Diego?”

“Yeah, how hard can it _be,_ Uncle Diego?”

“Okay, that’s it,” Diego shouts, hoisting Claire up so that she’s hanging over his shoulder instead of sitting on his hip, and she lets out another squeal of laughter. “Where’s the dumpster, guys? Over by the east wing, right? I’m gonna go throw this kid out so we can get a new one.”

 

 

Later, when they’re all gathered around the biggest round table that the ice cream shop on the other side of town has to offer, and Vanya is squeezed onto the bench-style seat between Diego and Ben, she finally gets the chance to ask.

“How’d you know?” she whispers to Diego.

He’s been working on licking around the bottom of his ice cream cone, and with his tongue still out he asks, “Huh?”

“How’d you know she was gonna be so excited about it?”

Diego’s brow furrows. He seems to get his ice cream cone into a state that he likes, because he lowers it and looks ahead toward Claire, who’s bouncing in her seat and going on and on and on about all the Umbrella Academy stories she’s heard from Allison and how she would have used her very own superpowers to help if she’d been there.

She’s in the midst of a story about how she would have made all the hostages at the museum less scared, and she would have found the least angry robber and made him let everybody go, and then her mommy wouldn’t even have _needed_ to ask the robber very nicely to put down the things he stole, because he would have _wanted_ to put them down anyway because he would have felt guilty.

Diego clearly tries, and fails, not to smile at how cute their niece sounds right now.

Then, tilting his head toward Vanya, he answers, “Not that complicated. Thought you’d pick that up better than anyone, actually.”

Vanya shakes her head.

“Well, the rest of us never had that moment, did we?” he asks, keeping his voice low. “We never _found out_ that we had powers. It was always just… there. Nothing crazy, just another excuse for Dad to be a dick in the name of progress, or whatever. But _she…”_

He nods at Claire, who’s now moved the discussion on to how much fun the beach is and how she can’t _wait_ for next Monday so she can show it to her Uncle Five and Uncle Luther and Uncle Diego for the very first time.

“She’s not us,” Diego says. _Thank God for that_ goes unsaid, but Vanya hears it loud and clear. “She’s an eight-year-old kid who just found out she’s got superpowers, like all the cool heroes in her comic books. And _since_ she’s not us, she never had a reason to think superpowers are anything other than awesome.”

He shrugs, lifting his cone and inspecting it for drips again.

“Like I said, sis. Not that complicated.”

 

 

Later, much later, when nearly everyone is full to bursting with ice cream and they’re crashing from the sugar high in the living room, Claire is snuggled up to Vanya’s side and is obviously struggling to stay awake so that she can keep watching the movie they left playing in the background. One of her cartoon movies, Vanya forgets the name of it.

The only one of her siblings not in attendance is Five, who’s currently holed up in his bedroom with piles and piles of textbooks from the library, and who did _not_ look ready to leave any time soon, not when Vanya visited — though he  _did_  seem to appreciate the ice cream delivery, at least. Allison is curled up on Vanya’s other side, out cold with her head pillowed on her forearms. The rest of the boys are piled around on the other couch and the armchair and the floor, wherever they happened to fall, either fully asleep or on their way there as they blink bleary eyes at the TV screen. Luther at least isn’t quite asleep yet, which means they’re all living blissfully snore-free for the moment.

For now, the only sound in the room is the TV.

“Hey,” Vanya whispers. “You awake?”

“Mm-hmm,” Claire answers. “Why?”

Vanya leans in close and whispers, “I think it’s really cool that you have superpowers.”

Claire gives a pleased little hum in agreement. “It is really cool.”

“Yeah.”

Vanya hugs her a little closer to her side, and after a moment she finally brings herself to ask the question that’s been bugging her ever since Claire came bursting into the room screaming in excitement over her powers.

She has to ask. She has to be sure.

“But you know you were special even without powers, right?”

“Uh-huh.”

That’s it. Not so much as a _beat_ of hesitation. She didn’t even have to think about it. Claire yawns and rubs at her eyes, and she grabs at the blanket that’s piled around her waist, pulling it up until it covers her shoulders and Vanya’s arm. She seems totally unaware that she’s left her Auntie Vanya a little speechless for a second — and maybe she _is_ unaware of it. Maybe her powers aren’t that fine-tuned. Maybe her powers are dulled down a bit when she’s sleepy.

So maybe she can’t tell that Vanya’s heart feels like it just jumped up into her throat.

Vanya swallows it down and she asks, “Yeah?”

“Mm-hmm. Superpowers is just, like… a bonus special thing,” Claire adds through another yawn. Her eyes are closed now. “Mommy said I was always special before, too. Just ‘cause I’m me.”

Vanya smiles at that, feeling a little swell of pride in her sister. For someone with almost no real role models in her life, she figures Allison is doing a hell of a job as a parent these days. “Well, your mommy was right,” she whispers. “You’re probably the coolest, most special person I’ve ever met in my whole life, you know that?”

“Yeah,” Claire murmurs. “You’re pretty cool and special, too.”

And… wow.

Of course Vanya’s been told that before. She must have heard some version of that a _million_ times from her siblings over the last few years.

Sometimes it was spoken in awe of her powers, because she’d just accidentally destroyed another wall during practice, brick and paneling and wood and all. Sometimes it was after one of them gravitated to her room while she was playing her violin. Sometimes it was little mundane things, like the fact that she’s the only one in the house that can bake a decent cake or touch Five without warning and not lose an arm.

But there’s something really, extra incredible about hearing it for no reason at all from her niece, spoken so simply like it’s just another fact of the universe. The sky is blue, my dress is yellow, I’m special just by being me, and so is Auntie Vanya.

She hugs Claire a little closer and leans in again, this time to press a kiss to the top of her head.

“Thanks, sweetie.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> diego would definitely be That Uncle that picks you up and threatens to throw you in the dumpster lmao
> 
> next time: luther decides to do some investigating of his own, and he gets a little more help than he bargained for. also, claire comes down from the "i have superpowers" high and... has some questions.


	9. not the only one

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Luther follows up on a hunch. Elsewhere, Claire has some questions, and she seeks out her oldest and smartest uncle for some answers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is the chapter in which the MOST happens, and it's also (personally) my favorite chapter so far. i ended up switching a couple things from the first draft based on a scene suggestion from the lovely [BurningGalaxies](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BurningGalaxies/pseuds/BurningGalaxies), so thank you for that, it made this chapter 300% more chaotic and awesome ;D

 

_June 7th, 2022_

 

The green minivan is gone.

That’s easily explained, though. It’s the middle of the day on a weekday. Whoever owns it, probably that middle-aged lady Luther saw yesterday clicking off the alarm, she must work a normal everyday sort of job, right?

Normal, everyday. Theoretically Luther thinks he should have no idea how to pinpoint what _normal_ and _everyday_ look like, but he’s willing to bet this neighborhood would fit that bill.

He leans forward into the steering wheel, squinting through the dreary overcast day at the row of houses he and Diego staked out yesterday. It’s just a bunch of one- and two-story buildings with tiny lawns and a cookie cutter sort of symmetry to them, every other house more or less a mirror image of the one that came before it. Some of them are a little more rundown than others. Some of them are prettied up with flowering plants in their little plots out front, some with brightly colored shutters, some with a pile of kids’ bikes littering the front lawn. A few doors down, an elderly man is bent over his garden. A few doors down in the other direction, a teenage girl is bouncing a basketball in the street.

The house that once belonged to the mother of Nikhil Burman is exactly as it was yesterday. Its doors and windows are undisturbed — though of course if they’d been opened at some point and closed again, Luther has to admit he wouldn’t be able to tell — and a faded little sign out front still proudly displays _For Sale_ with a realtor’s smiling face on it.

It’s almost _frustrating_ how normal this neighborhood is.

Luther sighs, leaning back into the seat as much as he can. The family car doesn’t really afford a whole lot of room for him, but it’s not like Diego’s car was any better. He can manage.

Maybe this was a dumb idea, though.

Maybe he didn’t—

He’s jolted out of his thoughts by a sharp knock on the window, two quick raps with a knuckle over on the passenger side. Luther glances over, sees who it is, and immediately groans and sinks down a little lower into the seat.

_Damn it._

He rolls down the passenger side window without looking.

“License and registration?”

“Yeah, very funny.”

Diego snorts in that way that says _he_ sure thought it was very funny, and he reaches in through the open window to unlock the door and let himself in.

There’s a few seconds of horribly awkward silence after he pulls the door shut, the kind of awkward silence that Luther _knows_ his brother is purposely drawing out just to be an ass. Though, to be fair, Luther thinks he probably deserves a little awkwardness. Maybe.

Finally Diego says, “So. Thought we decided to call it quits on the Burman house.”

Luther winces. “Yeah. We did.”

“Then what gives? Why’re you out here staking the place out on your own?”

Luther chews on his cheek for a second, still staring ahead, and then he quietly admits, “I, uh… had a hunch.”

“A hunch, huh? And you didn’t want to tell me about it?”

“I wasn’t—” Luther starts to defend himself, then deflates, then feels warmth start to creep up to his cheeks. “It’s not a big deal. And I didn’t… you know, want to _make_ it one. I just thought I saw something weird yesterday. It might’ve been nothing, so I didn’t want to bother you in case it didn’t… pan out, I guess.”

“In case it ended up making you look crazy, you mean.”

“No,” Luther says, making a face. “Of course not. I just didn’t—” He shakes his head. “Wait, hold on, how did you even know I was here?”

“Five.”

Luther blinks, shooting a look at his brother. “Really? How did he—?”

“Four…” Diego says, leaning over to peer into the side view mirror. “Three… two…”

A second later the back door on Diego’s side is thrown open with a _clunk_ and the screech of the old car’s hinges, and Klaus comes gracelessly tumbling inside, a pile of gangly limbs in an oversized fur-lined vest.

“Why, _hello,_ ladies!” he shouts, far louder than necessary for the interior of a sedan, and he drums a rapidfire rhythm on the back of Diego’s seat. “Impromptu stake out, hmm? This is _exciting.”_

“Klaus,” Luther says, “what are you—?”

“See, Diego?” Ben’s voice sounds from directly behind him. “What’d I say? I knew something was up.”

Luther feels his jaw drop, and he grabs the rearview mirror so he can send a betrayed look at Ben, who’s slowly materializing in the back seat like a hologram. Bluish light trickles away from his shoulders and his hair in wisps, leaving him solid and as alive as he ever looks, his unimpressed gaze returning Luther’s in the mirror.

“Seriously, Ben?” Luther asks. “You sold me out to Diego?”

Ben leans back in his seat. “No, _Klaus_ sold you out to Diego. I just told Klaus you were acting shifty.”

“I was not!”

“No? Because I asked where you were heading, and you said you were going to the store to buy shoes,” Ben reminds him, raising an eyebrow. _“Shoes,_ Luther. I love you, man, but you’re a horrible liar.”

“So what is the reason for this secret little rendezvous, hmm?” Klaus asks.

“It’s not a secret,” Luther argues.

Klaus raises his eyebrows in a way that Luther can only think to describe as a look that says, _sure, pal, whatever you say,_ and he drones, “Eh, not anymore, maybe.”

“No, not anymore. Now it’s a _party,_ apparently,” Luther grumbles, pinching the bridge of his nose. He really hadn’t wanted to make this a whole big thing, and now over half of their family is here. The _loud_ half.

“Now, now, brother dear,” Klaus says. “You think this is a party? Tsk, tsk! I thought I’d taught you better than that! This is _certainly_ not a party. For one thing, you usually don’t invite an old man to a party.”

Luther lifts his head from his hand. “An old—?”

“Am I too late to make fun of Luther?” Five asks, appearing out of the ether and into the space between Klaus and Ben in the back seat.

“Never too late to make fun of Luther,” Klaus says. “Come on, you know that!”

“Jesus,” Luther says. “How many people did you guys invite to come crash my stake out?”

 _“Your_ stake out?” Diego asks.

“Yes, my stake out, because I didn’t want to make a big deal out of it!”

“Why not?” Five asks.

“Because—”

“Because he saw something weird yesterday and never told me about it,” Diego cuts him off. “Didn’t want anyone to think he was crazy.”

There’s a beat of silence as Luther closes his eyes and feels his cheeks turning _bright_ red, and then chaos erupts.

“For God’s sake, Luther, we’re supposed to—”

“— _literally_ see dead people and you’re worried that—”

“— what kind of weird thing—”

“— found out our eight-year-old niece can basically read minds, bro, so what could be—”

“— whole _lives_ are crazy—”

“— any consolation, I think you’re all—”

“Okay, okay, enough!” Luther shouts, quieting them all down. “I get it. I should have said something. But seriously, I’m almost positive it’s nothing. It’s _really_ not a big deal.”

“Well, what did you see?” Ben asks.

Klaus adds, “Or _think_ you saw. Either way, do tell!”

Luther opens his mouth, hesitating as he stares ahead at the row of houses. Might as well say it now, he supposes, given the cat’s already far out of the bag. “I’m not… exactly sure how to explain it,” he admits. “It was just this weird flash of light, like… almost _blue,_ I guess? And then—”

“What kind of blue?” Klaus asks.

“Uh… light blue?”

“Like, Ben blue, or Five blue, or Klaus blue?” Diego asks, pointing with his thumb at each of them in turn.

For a second, Luther genuinely wonders whether there’s a difference. Isn’t blue just… blue? But then he shakes his head.

“I mean, none of them. I would have… you know, recognized that. And it wasn’t blue-blue. White-blue, maybe, and it was more like a distortion? I guess? Anyway, that’s not really point. The _point_ is, there was the weird flash,” he says, gesturing toward the spot across the street. “Right over there. And there was a mail truck, and a minivan, and it looked like they both got shoved from the other side.”

“Shoved?” Five asks.

“Yeah, they sort of… you know, rocked back and forth a lot? And then the minivan’s alarm went off.”

The end of his explanation is met with silence while his brothers all stare vaguely in the direction he’d indicated, and Luther finds himself feeling more and more self-conscious with each passing second.

“Like I said,” he adds, “it was almost definitely nothing. It was probably a trick of the light, and anyone could have just bumped into the minivan and the mail truck—”

“Buddy,” Klaus says. “People don’t make cars that big rock back and forth by bumping into them.”

“They… they don’t?”

“Not enough to make the alarm go off, no,” Diego admits.

“Not unless they put a whole lot of effort into it, _or_ unless they’re your size, big guy,” Klaus tells him, not unkindly, and he pats Luther’s shoulder.

Five adds, “Which is not likely.”

“Oh.” Luther looks forward again, realizing for the first time that maybe his gauge for that sort of thing might be a little skewed.

 _“Or_ unless they were _inside_ the minivan, but in that case it would’ve rocked a whole lot more than once—”

Diego groans. “Klaus, don’t be gross.”

But Luther’s unfazed; he’s more than used to Klaus being Klaus, they all are. “So, what, you guys think I really saw something?”

“If you saw something, you saw something,” Diego says with a shrug, like it’s that simple. “We just gotta figure out what it was.”

Ben offers, “You think it has something to do with the house you’re staking out? It can’t be a coincidence, can it?”

“It can, technically. Not likely, though.” Five leans forward between the two front seats. “You have information on the house? Research?”

“Uh, yeah,” Luther says, popping open the glove compartment and fishing out the thick manila folder that’s stacked with police reports and newspaper clippings, and he hands it back to Five. “It’s mostly on this kid, Nikhil Burman. He’s—”

“Yeah, yeah, I can read,” Five says. “I’ll see what I can find out, and I’ll check back in later. Keep me posted on the stake out.”

With that, he disappears again, taking the folder with him.

“How are we supposed to keep him posted?” Klaus whispers. “He doesn’t have a phone.”

“Okay, but really,” Luther says, because their inability to keep tabs on their sixty-something brother is _definitely_ the least of his concerns at the moment, “you guys don’t think I’m being crazy about this?”

“Dude, again,” Ben says. “Our whole lives are crazy.”

“Yeah, buddy, you’re as sane as any of us!” Klaus laughs. “Crazy meter’s broken in our family, didn’t you hear? Your brother can see the dead, your other brother _is_ dead, your niece is practically half psych— _oh, my God.”_

“What?” Diego asks, wide-eyed as he twists around in his seat.

Luther first looks straight ahead. Had Klaus seen something? But when he finds nothing but perfectly normal suburban street he grabs the rearview mirror again to face Klaus. “What, Klaus? What is it?”

“Guys,” Klaus says, covering his mouth as his laughter dissolves into snorts. “Guys. _Guys.”_

“Oh, no,” Ben groans, sinking into his seat and covering his face with one hand. “No. Don’t you dare. Don’t you _dare,_ Klaus.”

“What?” Diego asks. “What the hell is he…?”

“Guys, she’s _clairvoyant.”_

A beat of silence, and then:

“God _damn_ it, Klaus.”

“Jesus Christ.”

“That’s so lame, man, even for you.”

“But she is!”

“She’s _not,”_ Ben insists. “Clairvoyance is when you can see the future.”

“No, I’m pretty sure it’s any… you know, extra-sensory stuff,” Klaus says.

“What, so _you’re_ clairvoyant then, too?”

“If the shoe fits—”

“I don’t care what shoe fits who,” Diego cuts in. “And I don’t care what the hell clairvoyant actually means. There’s no bad puns on a stake out. New rule.”

“Aw, come on, Diego!”

“Nope,” Diego says, shifting around to face front and crossing his arms. “Focus up or get out, we’re on stake out hours now.”

Klaus lets out a melodramatic little sigh, raspberrying it through his lips and everything, and then he drapes himself over the back of Diego’s seat. “Fine, fine, fine, have it your way, I guess. But I am definitely looking up the definition of clairvoyant when we get home — I’m dropping it now, relax!” he hastily tacks on, because Diego had started bristling again. “Seriously, I’m all one-hundred-and-ten percent in stake out mode. So! What do we do, go around and question the neighbors? Post up ads for anyone that’s seen a strange blue light that didn’t come from me or Benny Boy or Five-Oh?”

“Nope,” Diego says. “We sit here and we keep an eye out to see if anything weird happens again.”

Klaus blinks, then shakes his head. _“What?”_

“That’s what a stake out is, bro.”

“Oh, come on! That’s so boring!” Klaus whines, dropping his arms to hang in front of him as he hooks his chin over the shoulder of Diego’s seat, his eyes staring ahead. He pouts a bit longer and then asks, “Well, what about the house?”

“That’s what we’re watching, isn’t it?” Diego asks.

“But have you guys gone in it yet?”

“No,” Luther says, because he already knows where Klaus is going with this. “Absolutely not. We are not breaking into someone’s house. That is _incredibly_ illegal.”

“It’s not someone’s house, though!” Klaus argues, waving a hand at it like they’re not all already staring at it. “It’s for sale! That’s fair game, if you ask me.”

“Good thing we’re not asking you,” Diego tells him.

“Look, Klaus,” Luther says. “It belongs to the bank, or the government, but either way we can’t go in. It’s private property. Unless we get a warrant, which we can’t, it is still very illegal for us to go walking into that building.”

Klaus doesn’t say anything to that, but there’s a small noise of protest from the other end of the backseat, an _uh_ that’s aborted halfway through, like Ben had started to say something and then immediately thought better of it.

Luther moves the rearview mirror anyway and raises an eyebrow at him.

“Well…” Ben says, sheepishly looking from Klaus to Diego and then back to Luther in the mirror. “Not _all_ of us.”

 

 

The house is pretty empty today.

Not really in a bad way, and maybe _empty_ isn’t the right word, Claire thinks. She can hear her Auntie Vanya just a few rooms away, practicing her violin. The soft, pretty music is floating out into the hallways like it’s alive, the way music only ever does when Auntie Vanya’s around. And Mom is somewhere downstairs with Nana, and she knows her Uncle Five just got home a little bit ago, too.

That’s one, two, three, four, _five_ whole people. So the house isn’t empty, since it’s got more people in it right now than her house in California _ever_ has, but with her Uncle Luther and Uncle Diego and Uncle Ben and Uncle Klaus out for the day, it feels…

 _Vacant,_ she remembers from her one summer reading book. Empty, but not in a sad way or a lonely way. Just like there’s space that needs filling up.

Claire reasons that must be because of how big the house is.

But she sets that aside in her brain as a _later_ thing to think about; she has more important concerns at the moment. She hops up the stairs two at a time, just because she can, and Auntie Vanya’s music ruffles everything in the hallway like a breeze — the curtains, her hair, her shoelaces, the sleeves of her dress — as she loops around to take the _next_ set of stairs all the way up, where the music is just quiet background noise.

When she reaches the door she’d been looking for, it’s already wide open, so instead of knocking she just stops in the doorway with her hands behind her back.

“Hi, Uncle Five.”

He’s sitting on his bed surrounded by a bunch of papers, frowning down at them with a line between his eyebrows, but that line goes away when he looks up. “Oh, hey Claire. What’s up?”

She shrugs, and he tilts his head to tell her she’s allowed to come in.

Claire really likes her Uncle Five’s room. Mostly because he always lets her draw on the walls, as long as she promises not to erase anything that’s already there. She steps inside, twirling around in a circle to look at it all — he’s added more of the math problems that Claire likes, the ones that look more like drawings than real math problems, plus a bunch more of the boring number problems she _doesn’t_ like. Her drawing from a few years ago is still down in the corner by the door, too, a little stick figure family of eight.

She should redo that one someday soon, she thinks. She can draw way better than that now.

“There’s some chalk in that drawer.”

Claire nods, but she doesn’t go for the chalk. Instead she hops up onto the bed, settling herself criss-cross-applesauce in the spaces between all his papers. There’s a yellow folder opened up with a bunch of newspapers and homeworks all spread out around it, plus a huge stack of school books against the wall. Claire leans over to look at the book on top and sees a picture of a brain on it, painted in all sorts of cool colors.

She didn’t come here to look at all of Uncle Five’s books and papers, even though that’s what she’s doing anyway. She came here to ask him something, something important.

But here she is, not doing that.

She _has_ to ask, though, because Uncle Five is old and he’s smart and he’s the only one in her family that _really_ talks to her like a grown up. He won’t lie to her because she’s a kid. Sometimes it can be weird and confusing, but sometimes — like now — it’s probably what she needs.

And now that she’s here, she can’t make the words come out.

There’s a feeling, then, like an itchy-cold feeling on her arms, a swoop somewhere in the middle of her belly. Uncle Five is worried about something, she can tell.

“Claire?” he asks. “You okay?”

She knew he was gonna say that. Not _that_ that, but something close to that.

And no one else knows that kind of stuff. Just her.

“Mm-hmm.”

She doesn’t look at her Uncle Five. Instead she lets her eyes trail up, up, up, all the way to his ceiling with the chalk night sky that’s been there as long as she can remember. A bunch of stars, a few wispy clouds that almost look like she could reach out and touch them, a fat crescent moon with little craters and everything. Uncle Luther drew it, she knows. He’s the only one that could’ve reached up that high, and maybe, she’s always thought, you have to _go_ to the moon to be able to draw it so well.

But looking at Uncle Luther’s moon drawing isn’t distracting her enough. The itchy-cold feeling sinks down deeper.

“Hey,” Uncle Five says, quieter. “What’s wrong?”

She looks away from the ceiling and finds that little line returned to the middle of Uncle Five’s eyebrows.

“How can you tell?” Claire asks him. The little line gets deeper and his eyes get narrower, so she explains, “How can you tell something’s wrong?”

Uncle Five stays confused for another second, but then he makes that _ah-ha_ face he makes when he figures out one of his math problems. “Right. Well, mostly because of what I can see,” he says, pointing at her and twirling his finger in a circle. “You look like something’s wrong, and you didn’t want to draw, and you’ve barely said a word since you got in here.”

“What if I just didn’t want to draw?”

He smiles like she told a joke, which she thinks is a little weird because she definitely wasn’t joking, so she tries again.

“Sometimes I just don’t feel like drawing. Why’s that mean something’s wrong?”

“Call it grown up intuition.”

She wrinkles her nose. “Intuition?”

“Instinct,” Uncle Five says. “People who don’t have your powers, we… have to guess, most of the time, what other people are feeling. We use facial expressions and other clues. My niece clamming up instead of talking my ear off, that’s a clue. My niece refusing to draw on my walls for the first time in recent memory, that’s another clue. Neither of those clues mean you’re _definitely_ sad or angry. I can’t tell that, because I don’t have your power. But it’s enough for me to make an educated guess.”

“I’m not sad,” she says, because she’s not. “I’m not angry, either.”

“Well,” Uncle Five says, “then what _are_ you feeling?”

She chews on her cheek, looking down and playing with the hem of her dress. “I dunno. Confused, I guess, and… not _scared_ scared, but… I don’t know. Close to scared.”

“Nervous?”

Yeah, she thinks, that sounds right. She nods.

“What are you nervous about?”

She shrugs.

“Claire. It’s okay. Whatever you’re nervous about, I’m sure we can—”

“When Mommy told me about my powers, she was sad and scared,” Claire blurts out, and then all of a sudden she can’t stop talking, like the first few words cracked open an egg and all the goop is spilling out. “She was trying to look like she was happy, but I could tell she was sad and scared, and she got a _little_ happy when I said that _I_ was happy because I _was_ happy but she was still kinda sad and scared underneath. And everybody else is like that, too. They act happy and they’re _kinda_ happy, because I’m happy and everybody’s happy when someone they care about is happy, but they’re still all scared underneath and I can’t figure out why.”

Uncle Five’s worry is different now. It’s lighter, less like a bowling ball in her stomach, more like a fluttering somewhere up higher. He moves some of his papers out of the way and sits criss-cross-applesauce, too, turning a little so he’s facing her.

“Claire, have you asked your mom about any of this yet?”

She shakes her head. The hem of her dress has a tiny thread loose, and she picks at it instead of looking up.

“Why not?”

She shrugs. “I dunno.”

“Yeah, you do.”

Claire huffs. Uncle Five is a little _too_ smart, maybe.

“Claire?”

“She wouldn’t tell me if she was scared. She thinks it’s a Mommy’s job to make sure I don’t know when she’s scared.”

“That… _is_ kind of true, I guess.”

“And I didn’t wanna ask her because…”

She gulps, and now she has that funny almost-crying feeling that she _hates._ She’s supposed to be good at this stuff, right? At feelings? It’s supposed to be her _superpower,_ but now her face and her throat are all working against her even though she doesn’t want them to, and she’s _not_ sad, she’s _not,_ but she gets that funny feeling in her throat and that stingy feeling in her eyes anyway and there’s nothing she can do about it and it’s  _stupid._

She sniffs and finally says what she really wants to say.

“Because she especially wouldn’t tell me if she was scared of _me.”_

“Claire, that’s silly. She’s not scared of you, she’s— oh,” Uncle Five says when she reaches up to scrub at her nose with the back of her arm. “Right. Uh,” he says and then lets out a breath. “Okay. Come here.”

She rushes forward and wraps her arms tight around his waist, presses her cheek into his shirt and squeezes her eyes shut against the tears building up.

And Uncle Five doesn’t hug like Uncle Diego or Uncle Klaus or anybody else does. He doesn’t scoop her up and hold her tight like they do, but that’s okay. Claire still remembers when she first met everybody, and Mommy told her not to be upset if her Uncle Five didn’t want to hug her, because he was out of practice and he might be uncomfortable. He let her hug him anyway, even all the way back then, but she could still see what her mom meant at the time.

He’s gotten a little better at it since then. It was just like her mom said, he just needed practice.

“No one’s scared of you,” he says, and his voice echoes under her ear. She feels his hand on her arm up by her shoulder, and the other one runs up and down her back. “What you’re picking up with your powers is a little different than that. They’re not scared _of_ you, they’re scared _for_ you.”

She sniffs again. “Why?”

“That’s our job. We’re supposed to be a little scared most of the time,” he tells her. “That’s what it’s like, being an adult, caring about a little kid like you. It’s a little hard to explain, but…” He lets out one of those breaths again, quick and a little frustrated, and it tickles her hair. “Look, your mom and all of us, we don’t want anything bad to happen to you, right?”

She nods, rubbing her cheek up and down on his shirt.

“Well, that means we’re always thinking of anything bad that _could_ happen, so we can make sure all those bad things _don’t_ happen,” he explains. “Adults have to take the worst case scenario — the worst thing that could _possibly_ happen — into account, even if it’s highly unlikely. Just in case.”

“What’s the worst case scenario?”

Uncle Five shrugs. “I don’t know. Neither does your mom. None of us know what’s going to happen, and I think that’s probably the scary part.”

“Not me, though?”

“No, Claire. Definitely not. Not even a little,” he tells her. “I promise. Just… try to remember that emotions can be complicated, okay? Sometimes what you pick up with your powers might not be exactly what you think it is. And worse comes to worse, you can always ask if you’re not sure.”

That makes sense, she thinks. She nods again. “Okay.”

“I’ll tell you what, I think later you should ask your mom about all this, too, okay? Don’t take my word for it. Just remember, like I said, she only seems afraid because she’s worried _for_ you.”

“But why though? What kinda bad things does she think is gonna happen?”

“That’s…” Uncle Five stops for a second. “That’s also pretty complicated, to tell the truth. But I think she’s just worried you might make some of the same mistakes she did.”

“Like what?”

“Like using your powers too much, or using them when you’re not supposed to. In her case, that meant making people do things when she shouldn’t have. In your case, it’s a little more complex than that. But you’ll figure it out.”

“You think so?”

“I do,” he says, and the hand he’s got on her arm squeezes a little. “You’re smart, and you have all of us to help you along, too. It’s not gonna be perfect, and it’s not gonna be easy, but I think you’ll find that you had the right idea before anyway. It _is_ pretty awesome that you have superpowers.”

Now, that’s definitely true, Claire thinks. She smiles and rubs her nose back and forth on his shirt, and she thinks of all her comic books about superheroes and how they always got their powers. “And I didn’t even have to fall in a vat of toxic waste or get blown up or _anything,”_ she says. “I got to be born with my powers, just ‘cause my mom had them. _And_ I have a whole family full of people with superpowers, so I don’t even have to be the only one.”

Uncle Five snorts. “Yeah, you’re definitely not the only one, that’s for sure.”

He doesn’t end the hug, which is nice. He just lets her stay right where she’s at, and he keeps on rubbing her back for a little while longer.

But then, out of nowhere, he goes all stiff like a board.

“Holy _shit,”_ he whispers.

She can feel the way he gets all nervous and excited at the same time, but even if she couldn’t, his heart pumping way faster under her ear and the fact that he just _swore_ in front of her (for like the first time _ever)_ is enough to make her pull back and look up at him. He’s staring straight ahead, his eyes wide and his mouth open.

“Of course.”

“Uncle Five?”

At the sound of her voice he shakes himself out of it, and then he smiles down at her and says, “Claire, you’re a _genius.”_ He pulls her in again, just long enough to kiss the top of her head, and then he lets her go and hurries off the bed. “I have to go, but you can stay here and draw if you want. You know the rules, just don’t erase anything. You’re okay, though? You’ll be okay if I run out for a bit?”

“Uh-huh. Where are you going?”

“The library,” he says, pulling on his jacket. “Gotta see if my hunch is right first.”

He grabs the yellow folder off the bed, piles a bunch of the newspapers and essays into it, and he folds it in half and stuffs it inside his jacket.

 _“Then,”_ he says, “I’m gonna have to go check on your idiot uncles.”

 

 

“I got a bad feeling about this.”

“No,” Luther says. “Come on, I’m sure it’s… fine.”

“Real convincing, bro,” Diego says, and Luther winces because — yeah, he’d heard the uncertainty in his own voice, too.

“What’s the worst that can happen to him, though?” Luther asks with a shrug. “He’s a ghost.”

“I don’t know, but he’s been in there way too long.”

Luther checks the dashboard clock. By the time they’d finished their _very_ long argument about whether or not Ben should be allowed go into the house in the first place, it’d already been quarter past three. Now the clock reads 3:47. He’s just passed the half hour mark.

“It _has_ been a while,” he admits. He sighs and grips the steering wheel for lack of anything better to do with his hands. “I thought he would have just peeked inside and then left. Why would he stick around so long before coming back?”

Diego hums in thought, still glaring ahead at the house. Then he shifts around in his seat and says, “Klaus, you’re sure he’s not—? _Klaus,_ damn it, wake the hell up!”

“Hmm? Wha— _ow,_ Diego!”

Diego had just grabbed Luther’s empty to-go cup from the cupholder and tossed it into the back seat, and Luther saw it in the rearview mirror hitting Klaus _directly_ in the center of his forehead. “You’re supposed to be awake, asshole!”

“Hey, cut me some slack, alright?” Klaus yells. “It’s boring in here, and it’s nice and warm—”

“That doesn’t—!”

 _“— and_ it’s quiet, and you two brooding bastards are _no_ help in making it any less boring, let me tell you—”

“Klaus,” Luther cuts in, low and annoyed, and he wishes he had enough room to drop his forehead onto the steering wheel. “You can’t fall asleep when your focus is the only—”

“My _lack_ of focus, you mean!”

“You have to focus on not focusing,” Diego argues. “Don’t bullshit us, man, we _know_ that. It’s not like you’ve never conjured Ben in your sleep before. What if someone saw him?”

“No one saw him, guys, _relax,_ take a breath,” Klaus insists, lounging back in his seat and kicking his feet up on the center console. “Even if anyone _did_ see him, which they didn’t, you know what happens when someone who’s _not me_ sees a ghost? They think it’s not real. They go—” he hikes up his voice to a squeak, adopts a painfully inaccurate British accent, and says, “‘Oh, dearie _me!_ Whatever did I _put_ in my tea this morning?’ And that’s it! No one’s first thought is gonna be those kids from the Umbrella Academy. Barely anyone even remembers what the Umbrella Academy _is.”_

“And if they do?”

“They _don’t,_ Diego, we’re — oh, hey, Ben — old news by now.”

Luther almost jumps. “Ben’s here?”

“Yep, just popped in. _Hello,_ brother dearest, welcome back to the land of the living.”

“Okay, so,” Ben says, his voice sort of wavy and ethereal at first, just as Luther turns the rearview mirror and sees him solidifying in the same seat he’d left half an hour ago, “we may have a problem.”

Luther’s still trying to get through the transition from _yelling about being worried for Ben_ to _oh wait_ _Ben’s fine and he’s actually here,_ but Diego moves through it a little faster.

“What kind of problem?” he asks. “Did someone see you?”

“What? No, no one saw me,” Ben says. “He saw _you guys._ In the car. But listen, that’s not really the point. I searched the whole house top to bottom, right? And I could tell there was definitely someone squatting in the second floor bedroom, and—”

“You’re sure?”

“Yeah, I’m sure, I know what it looks like, man,” Ben says, and beside him Klaus gives a sheepish little wave. “Anyway, there was no one there at first, and then I went downstairs to keep poking around, and then I figured I’d take a look at the bedroom again just to get another look. When I got back up, there was someone there, and he was definitely—”

“GUYS, I figured it out!”

 _“Christ_ on a—”

“For shit’s sake—”

The car dips slightly with the instantaneous addition of another hundred-something pounds of person, and Luther thinks, if Five keeps this up, they’re _all_ gonna end up having heart attacks one of these days.

“You can’t give us a _little_ warning, Five?” Luther asks, shooting an annoyed look at the mirror, where Five seems completely oblivious (or is _acting_ completely oblivious) to Klaus and Ben to his left and right both glaring daggers at him.

“Can, don’t want to,” Five answers without hesitation. “Did you not hear me? I figured it out, all of it.”

“Okay, fine, whatever, but can we talk about this at _home?”_ Ben asks, one hand still on his chest. “We should probably to get out of here anyway, because that kid definitely knows—”

What happens next happens so quickly that none of the others have time to prepare for it.

Luther’s the only one that sees it, the only one still looking forward to see anything at all. That strange distortion of light happens again, a ripple in the air, a few sparks of white-blue electricity that Luther hadn’t noticed the last time. It looks almost exactly the same, except this time it starts by the front door of the abandoned house, and this time it doesn’t _stop._

This time it keeps warping and distorting the air around it as it barrels at impossible speeds _right for the car._

“Shit, guys—!”

There’s an echoing _boom_ from the direction of the house, and half a second later something rocks the car from the passenger side. The side mirror shatters, a spider crack forms in the front passenger side window, everyone shouts some version of _what the hell what the shit is going on_ all at once so that Luther can’t parse one voice from another, and the car keeps on tipping and tipping and tipping until—

The car’s gonna flip over.

The car’s gonna flip over and _they’re all still inside it._

_Shit, shit, shit!_

Luther braces himself, twisting in his seat and throwing his arms up to shield as many of them as he can. Maybe he can keep the roof from caving down on them when it inevitably hits the asphalt—

But then he feels a hand tugging at the sleeve of his shirt, and everything — the car, the thing that hit them, the screaming and shouting voices of all his brothers — all of it is blotted out by a light that’s bright, bright blue.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> some of you guessed where this was going in the comments! which is awesome, but sadly our hargreeves babies took a little longer to get there. we stan seven dumbasses
> 
> next up: ben's pov!


	10. the car flipping jewelry thief

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Hargreeves, as it turns out, are not as alone as they once believed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> every time i think i have a solid guess for how many chapters this thing will have, i swear it magically gets longer

 

_June 7th, 2022_

 

Being teleported by Five is always an unsettling experience.

And that’s coming from _Ben,_ who — between the Horror and the whole _dying_ thing and the sensation of oscillating in and out of tangibility on Klaus’ off days — likes to think of himself as a leading authority on unsettling experiences.

He wonders if the others feel it like he does.

Is it different if you’re not dead? Does it _not_ feel like being squeezed through the head of a needle and sucked down a vacuum tube and spat out on the other end like a chewed up piece of gum? He always thinks if he had any breath to lose he would _definitely_ lose it when that blue light takes over, so that’s probably one difference, at least.

In any case, Ben topples over on the drop out of that spacetime rift just like all the rest of them, falls ass-over-teakettle and lands on his back on the asphalt with a wince, so maybe some experiences don’t change all that much when you’re dead. At least not when your séance brother is keeping you among the land of the living with a tangible body and all the inconvenient aches and pains that come with it.

A second later there’s the _bang_ _crunch screeeeech_ of the car landing upside-down just a few yards away, set to the backdrop of his brothers moaning and groaning and cursing all around him.

But Ben doesn’t bother moving just yet. His head is _throbbing._

“That… wasn’t fun,” Luther murmurs, just a few feet away.

“What the _hell_ hit us?” Diego moans.

Klaus answers first. “Hoo boy, I don’t know, but — _woah,_ Fivey, you good, buddy?”

Then Luther. “Shit, Five?”

“I’m — _fine,_ just —”

Ben manages to sit up just in time to see Five take a few stumbling steps toward the overturned car, lean one hand on it, double over and puke. Klaus manages to get to his feet, too, and he only wobbles a little on his way to Five, like his off-kilter axis is already halfway back to on-kilter.

 _“Eugh,”_ Five groans, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “Shit.”

Klaus cringes with sympathy, rubbing his back. “Let it out, buddy. Let it out.”

“God, I _hate_ jumping that many people.”

“You’re okay, though?” Ben asks.

Five waves a dismissive hand over his shoulder — _yeah, yeah, I’m fine, let’s move the hell on please_ — but he doesn’t shrug Klaus off of him, which means he’s probably not back to a hundred percent just yet.

“Okay, seriously,” Diego says, standing up and walking in a slow circle, eyes sweeping over their surroundings. “What the hell hit us?”

Ben just shrugs, sitting with his forearms across his knees. He has no clue.

Luther groans as he stands, and he makes his way toward the car, bending over to inspect the damage. “I, uh… I think I might have seen it.”

“Yeah?” Diego asks, turning toward him. “What was it?”

“I… don’t know.”

“You _just_ said you saw it.”

“Yeah, that doesn’t mean I know what it was,” Luther says. He glances over at Klaus and Five to be sure the latter is no longer using the car for balance, then he grabs the car door through its open window and starts flipping it back over. The metal gives a screech of protest as he lifts it off the asphalt.

“What did you see, then?” Diego asks, taking a step toward the car like he’s considering helping Luther right it. He seems to think better of it, though, and he moves to help Five keep his feet instead.

“It was…” Luther grunts with effort, winces when he gets the car about fully sideways and _definitely_ destroys the only remaining side mirror, “… like the thing I saw yesterday.”

Ben asks, “The weird light?”

Luther grunts in the affirmative, shoes skidding on the asphalt as he struggles to set the car down gently and avoid destroying the shocks. It rocks a bit on the landing, but Ben thinks he managed it well enough.

“Saw it a little better this time,” Luther says as he reaches inside and plants one hand under the crushed roof, bending the metal up and attempting to get it back to some semblance of what it looked like before. “Anybody’s guess what it was, though.”

“I know what it was,” Five mutters, drawing all of their attention to him. His voice was strained, and even as he bats away Diego’s and Klaus’ attempts to help, he looks about ready to keel over. “Probably.”

Ben raises an eyebrow.

Luther asks, “Huh?”

“Didn’t think he could...” Five mutters, squeezing his eyes shut and pressing the heel of his palm into his forehead, “… do _that,_ though.”

Luther asks, “Didn’t think _who_ could do that, Five?”

Five opens his mouth to answer, but he takes a step forward and goes green around the gills, nearly tripping over his own feet. He’d have face planted if not for Diego and Klaus hovering an inch away from him on either side, but they catch his fall easily enough.

“Okay, okay, old man,” Diego says, snaking an arm around Five’s waist to keep him upright. “Easy. Relax. Let’s all get in the car and get out of dodge, and _then_ you can tell us what the hell you’re talking about, yeah?”

 

 

Later, when they’re all gathered around the kitchen table, Diego asks, “So what did you actually _see?”_

“It was like I said before,” Luther explains, gesticulating with his elbows on the table. “It was a weird distortion of light, and it was — I said it was bluish, or white-blue, but this time I could see it better, and it was just… It was _electricity_ that was arcing around it. I think that’s where the bluish color came from. Like lightning.”

“A big ball of lightning?” Vanya asks, making a face as she pulls the pot of coffee off the machine and starts pouring it out into mugs. She hands one to Ben, sitting on the counter right beside the machine, and he takes it with a grateful smile even though he’s not quite corporeal enough at the moment that he’d be able to taste it. It’s the thought that counts, anyway.

Luther nods. “Yeah. Basically.”

“And you saw _that,”_ Diego says, leaning back with his arms crossed, “coming right at us?”

“Yeah, it was like… I don’t know, an invisible cannonball?” Luther tries. “With… lightning around it.” His shoulders drop a bit. “It sounds crazy, I know, but—”

“One more time, big guy, say it with us,” Klaus says, opening up his hands. “Our _whole lives_ are crazy. This? This is nothing.”

Ben tilts his head in agreement. He’s not wrong.

“But a ball of lightning,” Vanya repeats, placing a mug in front of Five and keeping another for herself as she takes a seat. “An _invisible ball of lightning_ flipped the car over with all of you in it.”

“It makes sense,” Five mutters.

Vanya starts, blinking wide eyes at him. “Come again?”

Ben asks, _“Does_ it?”

Five nods, still leaning heavily into the table on his elbows, one hand holding an ice pack to the side of his head, the other already pulling the mug of coffee close to his chest so he can curl protectively around it. Then he says lowly, “Actually confirms my theory. Or, you know, at least supports it.”

“Which is?” Vanya asks.

“Yeah,” Diego says, frowning. “Enlighten us, Five.”

Five lets out a sigh, the _ugh fine I guess I’ll explain it to you simpletons_ sigh that they’re all more than familiar with.

“If this kid can move as fast as I think he can, the air resistance would cause a lot of friction,” he says, leaning back with a wince and reaching his free hand into the inner pocket of his blazer. He wriggles a folded-in-half manila folder out of it and slaps it down on the table. “Friction causes heat. Heat can result in lightning.”

_Uh. What?_

Ben frowns, but none of them says anything — or can _think_ of anything to say — as Five opens up the folder and slides a few newspaper clippings and files out of the way.

“The kid,” Five says. “Nikhil. The one Diego’s been looking for,” he adds as a little aside for Vanya’s sake. “The one his client says stole an entire jewelry store’s worth of merchandise in the _three seconds_ that the security footage shorted out. I had a hunch, and I went to the library to check it out.”

He spins the folder around and taps his finger on one of the papers, drawing all of their attention to it.

It’s a death certificate, but not for anyone named Nikhil. Ben hops off the counter and strides around the table to get a better look, and he makes out the name _Amara Burman_ up top.

“You did a lot of research on him,” Five says, looking at Diego, “but you didn’t bother looking into his mother. I did. And it… answered a whole lot of questions, to say the least.”

“How does this answer any questions?” Luther asks. “We already know when his mother died.”

“Look at the birth date listed,” Five says, leaning back and moving the ice pack to the other side of his head.

Diego seems to catch it first, and all the color goes out of his face. “No. No way.”

“Afraid so,” Five says.

“No _fucking_ way.”

“You have a better explanation?”

Ben catches it at the same time that Luther and Vanya apparently do, stamped a few lines below Amara Burman’s name. His eyes widen.

D.O.B. OCTOBER 1ST 1989

“Oh, my God,” Luther says, pulling the death certificate closer.

Vanya’s jaw drops. “Five, are you saying she…?”

“Holy shit,” Klaus breathes, and instead of grabbing the death certificate he reaches for a different paper, the one wedged underneath it.

Ben sees why half a second later, and he circles the table to come up behind Klaus, leaning in with one hand on the back of his chair. There’s a police file with an obituary paperclipped over it, and Klaus’ wide eyes are transfixed on a familiar face — round cheeks, large brown eyes ringed in eyeliner, a dent along her hairline that never had the time to bruise. Klaus looks up from the photo to shoot a look at Ben before returning his eyes to the file, reading over every line.

“Huh,” Ben whispers. “Son of a bitch.”

“Right?” Klaus whispers back, flipping the obituary over to see if there’s anything on the other side.

“Like I said, it makes sense,” Five says to the rest of them. “His mother was born the same day as the rest of us. There’s no reason to assume that any of the other thirty-six children born that day _didn’t_ have abilities like we do, and thanks to Claire, we know that those abilities can be passed down.”

“There’s _more_ of them?” Vanya asks.

Luther adds, “More of _us?”_

Five nods. “So the evidence says.”

“What, you’re telling me—” Diego pauses, shakes his head — “the kid I’ve been tailing is… ?”

“Sort of like our nephew, yeah,” Five says, then shrugs one shoulder. “Loosely speaking.”

 _“He’s_ the one that flipped the damn car?”

“Seems like it,” Five answers. “If he can move fast enough, he’d be able to build up more than the momentum needed for it, and the human eye wouldn’t be able to catch him, which would explain the whole ‘invisible cannonball’ thing. It would also explain the jewelry shop.”

“How fast are we talking here?” Diego asks, sifting through the papers until he finds the one he was looking for, one that has a collection of security camera screenshots printed on it. Judging by the way he’s squinting, it doesn’t reveal anything new. “Faster than a car?”

 _“Yes,_ faster than a car,” Five says, eyeing Diego like that was a dumb suggestion to begin with. “Did you hear that boom before the car flipped? He broke the _sound barrier,_ Diego. He’d have to have been going at least eight hundred miles an hour.”

Vanya balks. “Eight _hundred?”_

“More or less.”

“That’s insane,” Diego says.

“Okay,” Five says, lowering the ice pack for the sole purpose of leveling Diego with an annoyed glare. “Do I have to go into the whole ‘our entire lives are insane’ thing _again?”_

“But—”

“Wait, stop, hold on,” Luther interrupts, waving his hands back and forth to silence them for a second. “I always assumed the other thirty-six wouldn’t have… I thought they weren’t _like_ us.”

Five shrugs. “Well, you assumed wrong.”

“No, but,” Luther shakes his head. “Why wouldn’t we have heard about them before now? If thirty-six other people have had abilities like ours for _thirty years,_ wouldn’t we have heard _something?_ On the news, or — or anything?”

Vanya nods. “Yeah, I mean, I always thought the others would have been… like I was. Or, you know, like I _thought_ I was.”

“Exactly,” Luther agrees. “The media always treated us like we were the only ones in the world.”

“Well I don’t know why we wouldn’t have heard anything until now,” Five says, “but—”

“Because they were scared,” Klaus answers distractedly, speaking up for the first time since he picked up the obituary. He leans back in his seat, still staring down at the picture of Amara Burman. “Or… their moms were, I guess.”

Ben smirks. He’d been coming to the same conclusion, and he’s a little proud of Klaus for putting it together that quickly, too.

Diego raises an eyebrow. “What?”

“Guys, think about it,” Klaus continues, looking around at the lot of them and dropping the papers back down on the table. “The other thirty-six were born the same day as us, right? And dear old Daddy,  _may he rest in pieces,”_ he adds, dropping his voice an octave and planting his palms together to give a mock bow to the floor, “tried to adopt all of them, and only our birth mothers gave us up. The others didn’t—”

“— and,” Ben adds, “we all know they were probably offered more money than _God,_ so—”

“— _clearly_ they really wanted to hang onto those babies,” Klaus finishes.

“So… what, they were afraid of Dad?” Vanya asks.

Klaus laughs. “Yeah! Wouldn’t you be? Shit, _I_ would be! I’d hide the _hell_ out of that baby if some creepy old bastard like Dad was trying to get his hands on it.”

Ben nods. “You’d probably teach the kid to hide whatever weird superpower they ended up having, too, just to stay under the radar. It would explain why we never heard anything about them when we were growing up.”

“And that kid would probably be _so_ used to hiding the fact that they have some kind of weird superpower,” Klaus adds, “that they’d keep on hiding that superpower when they grew up, and when they had kids, and… also, possibly, _maybe_ even after they’d died?”

He winces, raising his shoulders and lowering his head a bit, waiting for them to catch on to what he just said.

“Klaus,” Diego says, his voice low with warning, “what are you—?”

“I know her,” he blurts out guiltily, and he points at the obituary, sinking further into his seat. “Blunt Force Trauma Lady. She’s been following me around for the last… two weeks?” He glances toward Ben, who nods. “Yeah. Two weeks.”

Diego blinks, and then he yells, “Klaus! You’ve been talking to my prime suspect’s _mom_ for the last two weeks and you never—?!”

“I didn’t know who she was!” Klaus yells back. “And I haven’t been _talking_ to her, I didn’t even know her _name,_ she was always yammering on about her kids, and how she wanted me to find them, and—”

Five narrows his eyes. “And you didn’t think that might be worth looking into?”

“Ghosts say shit like that all the time!” Klaus argues. “If they’re not Ben, and they’re not… you know, tethered to a séance all the time, death kind of messes with their heads. Back me up here, man!”

Ben nods. “He’s right. I saw her hanging around, too, and I didn’t think anything of it.”

 _“Thank_ you!”

“And she died… what, a year and a half ago?” Ben asks, leaning in to check the date of death again. “Yeah, they tend to get a little less coherent the longer they stick around, especially if their unfinished business is never taken care of.”

“Unfinished business?” Vanya asks, raising an eyebrow. “What is this, a cheesy horror movie?”

“Oh- _ho,_ joke’s on you, dear sister,” Klaus says. “My whole _existence_ is a cheesy horror movie.”

“He’s… not totally wrong,” Ben admits. “Ghosts get, you know, less—” he gestures at himself — _“this_ and more horror-movie-esque if they spend too long obsessing over things they left behind. You know, revenge, loved ones in need, mistakes they made when they were alive. That kind of thing.”

“And _most_ people’s unfinished business doesn’t include a brother who’s a convenient doorway between worlds,” Klaus adds, leaning his chin on his hands with a wide smile, to which Ben just nods and points at him.

“Wait,” Luther says. “Were _we_ your unfinished business?”

Ben tilts his head, frowning. He’d thought that much was obvious. “Uh, yeah. What else would it have been?”

A strange emotion flits across Diego’s face. “You’re telling me if it wasn’t for Klaus—”

“I’d have spent a few years trying to knock some sense into you guys, failed, driven myself insane, and eventually turned into something out of The Conjuring, yeah,” Ben answers. Then he shrugs. “Relax, guys. I would have just given up and moved on to the afterlife if that was the case.”

Which… might not be entirely true, Ben can’t really _know_ that, but neither can any of them. It’s a moot point anyway.

“Okay,” Diego says, massaging his temple. “Fine. Is Burman here now? Can she confirm any of this?”

“Afraid not,” Klaus answers with a helpless shrug. “Most of the ghosts stay away these days ‘cause they’re so used to me banishing them, but she kind of… flits in and out as she pleases.”

“And when she _is_ here?” Diego asks. “Is she… you know…?”

“An insane, screaming wraith-banshee?”

Diego gives him a withering look. “Sure.”

“Nope.”

“Yeah, she’s not totally gone yet,” Ben agrees with a shrug. “She’d be coherent enough to ask about all this. Assuming she’d trust us enough to tell the truth.”

“Good enough for me,” Diego says. “I’ll take it. You two work on contacting her. In the meantime, we gotta track down this kid somehow. If he really _did_ steal all that shit from the jewelry store, he’s a wanted criminal, so—”

“Diego, he’s fifteen,” Vanya interrupts.

“A juvenile delinquent, then,” Diego says with a shrug. “One who’s got no problems breaking the law and one who _apparently_ can run faster than the speed of light, so—”

“The speed of sound,” Five corrects. “Nothing moves faster than the speed of light.”

“What?” Diego asks. “What about—”

Five rolls his eyes. “I bend a small portion spacetime _around_ me, I don’t just instantaneously _appear_ somewhere else. Jesus, Diego, that would destroy the whole fabric of—”

“That doesn’t make any—”

“It _would_ if you would just—”

“Guys,” Vanya cuts in. “I think we’re all missing something pretty important here.”

“And that is?” Diego asks.

“How are any of us supposed to track down someone who can run eight hundred miles an hour? That sounds… kind of impossible.”

They all fall into silence for a moment. And Ben has to admit, aside from tracking down and speaking to the kid’s mother, he hadn’t really given much thought to how they’d find the _kid._

Klaus is the first to offer an idea. “We could… try to get him to come to _us_ somehow?”

Diego snorts. “Yeah, ‘cause he’s just gonna turn himself in.”

“He might,” Luther speaks up, and all of them automatically turn to him. “If it’s us.”

“If it’s us?” Five repeats, raising an eyebrow. “He doesn’t even know who we are.”

“Exactly,” Luther says. “No one really knows who we are. We’ve been lying pretty low, right? The Academy is barely ever spoken about, and Vanya’s book got pulled off the shelves three years ago when this kid was… what, twelve? And if his mother kept her own powers a secret, I doubt she ever would have told him about us.”

“What’s your point?” Diego asks.

Luther shrugs and opens up his hands. “He must think he’s the only one, right? He thinks he’s alone. Maybe if we let him know he’s not, he might stop running away. Maybe he’d be willing to talk to us.”

“Talk to us,” Diego repeats, his voice dripping skepticism. “So, what, now we’re just gonna have a chat with the car flipping jewelry thief?”

“Look, if he really came from the original forty-three,” Luther says, “doesn’t that kind of make him our responsibility? Like Five said, it’s almost like he’s our nephew.”

“No, it is _not_ almost like he’s our nephew,” Diego argues, eyes widening. “Claire’s our niece because we _grew up with_ Allison, not because Allison was born the same day as us. This isn’t even in the same ballpark as that.”

“Diego, he’s still a kid,” Luther argues.

“He  _flipped the damn car,”_ Diego says. “He could have killed us!”

“Well, maybe he didn’t… mean to?”

“Didn’t mean to. That’s seriously what you’re going with.”

“It could have been a misunderstanding.”

“How the hell is flipping a car a  _misunderstanding?”_

Ben speaks up, “If we hear his side of the story, we’ll probably understand a little better.”

And Ben coming to Luther’s defense is, apparently, enough to make Diego falter. He huffs, running both hands over his face, and then he slumps back against his chair and stares up at the ceiling like he’s praying to a higher power to either give him patience or smite him right where he’s sitting. “Okay. Okay. _Fine._ Who’s in favor of talking it out with the jewelry stealing speed demon?”

Luther raises his hand, and Ben does, too. Klaus shrugs and raises his, and he’s quickly followed by Vanya.

“I don’t see how _else_ we’re gonna find him,” Five admits, raising his own hand.

And that’s the end of that. Diego sighs and asks, “So who’s gonna talk to him, then? ‘Cause no offense, big guy, but this kid is gonna take one look at those bodybuilder shoulders and go running for the hills. And I don’t think my pretty face is gonna be much better.”

“Well…” Luther says, hesitating before he directs a pointed look across the table, and the rest of them all follow his gaze straight to Five.

Five blinks. He sits back, warily looking from one of them to the other.

“No,” he says. “Absolutely not. No way.”

“Five—”

“It’s. Not. Happening.”

 

 

“I cannot believe this is happening,” Five says, rubbing the bridge of his nose as he steps through the rip in spacetime and to the other side.

A thick layer of dust cushions his steps, his shoes all but silent as he lands on the hardwood. The remnant of sunlight from outside is still blotted in little circles on his retinas, and he blinks a few times, trying to adjust to the darkness. The house is about as dreary and dark as he might have expected, for a home that’s gone unsold for eighteen months. As his eyes adjust, he catches glimpses of little homey touches in the room he’s just entered — picture frames on the walls, an area rug, an old overstuffed couch. Little touches that might have made it feel more welcoming once upon a time, but that time has long since passed.

Five tilts his head, listens. There’s not so much as a peep from anywhere in the house, not a creak of wood or a hush of breath. The place is empty.

He sighs and, tucking his hands into his pockets, makes his way up to the second floor.

“Ridiculous. ‘Oh, but you _look_ like him, Five.’ ‘He might _listen_ to you, Five.’” He rolls his eyes. “Idiots, every last one of them.”

Klaus would have been a far better choice, if you ask him. Never mind what age Five might look, Klaus is the one who acts the youngest, and he’s the one who has the most experience in interacting with _people,_ teenage and adult alike. Every time they go out Klaus seems to run into yet another person he knows, a reformed dealer, a kid he met at rehab, an old ex that he’s somehow still friends with. Klaus just _gets_ people in a way Five never has. _He_ should be the one here.

Then Vanya would have been his second choice, if only because she’s physically the smallest and certainly the least intimidating. Then Allison, who could probably just smile at the kid and turn him into a pliant ball of putty. Then Ben, then Luther, then Diego, and then _all_ the way down on the bottom of the list: Five.

“Absolutely ridiculous.”

There’s no use complaining about it now — not that that’ll stop him from complaining about it _anyway,_ even to an empty house with no one around to hear him, but still. He’s long since past the point of refusing.

He steps into the second floor bedroom and comes upon the exact scene that Ben had described. A flimsy little mattress is pushed into the corner with several blankets piled on top. There’s a few candles stacked neatly together on a rickety side table with a lighter beside them, a stack of books beneath the table, a suitcase on the foot of the bed, a flashlight beside it.

And that’s it.

“So this is how you’ve been living, huh?” Five murmurs, crouching down by the table to read the spines of the books.

Most of them are fiction books, pulled right from the young adult section of the public library. There’s also a book on space, a photo book titled _Nebulae and Galaxies of the Universe._ At the top of the stack is a thick textbook on… sign language? Five frowns. Is the kid trying to teach himself?

“Then why drop out of school?” he wonders aloud.

Makes no sense.

He stands up straight and inspects the bed next. It looks recently slept in. Maybe the kid left not too long ago, he thinks. Maybe Five just missed him.

Cautiously, Five lifts the suitcase lid with a single finger, peering inside. All there is inside is a bunch of clothes. Jeans, shirts, socks, a few sweaters, and another flashlight. Nothing out of the ordinary.

Then he sighs, letting the lid fall shut. Like Ben told them, it’s a fairly standard living space for someone who’s living illegally in an abandoned home.

_What were you expecting? A map to the stolen jewelry? A sign that says, yes, good job finding me, I am indeed the descendant of a woman who became pregnant and gave birth in the same day in 1989?_

“Would have been nice,” Five murmurs. “But no.”

He turns away from the suitcase and the bed and the nightstand, and he sits right down on the floor, cross-legged on the dusty hardwood. The kid isn’t here, and Five has no way of knowing when he might come back. But however lacking Five may be in people skills and disarming innocence and all that, he _does_ have one thing that none of his siblings do. Patience, built up over decades upon decades in the Apocalypse, honed and refined in his time spent working for the Commission.

So Five slides the sign language textbook off the kid’s stack of books, cracks it open, and settles himself in for a long wait.

 


	11. superhero puberty

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Five continues his search for the mystery speedster kid. Meanwhile, Allison psyches herself out for an important phone call that actually ends up going pretty well.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter is essentially mostly filler, but it's filler i _very_ much enjoyed writing and it's something that's gonna springboard us into some plot next chapter
> 
> so, here we have: (1) evidence the author cannot physically restrain herself from giving five more amiable relationships outside of his family to show that he's ~adjusting~ (2) the reason for the "patrick is nice because i said so" tag and (3) a very minor cliffhanger

 

_June 8th, 2022_

 

It’s funny. After they averted the end of days, after they went back and they finished their mad dash to fix everything and Five grabbed his siblings’ hands and yanked them all back through a jagged tear in spacetime, after Vanya never brought down the Academy, after the moon never cracked through its core and rained its scorching meteors down on the Earth —

The Earth, when they returned, was in one piece. And of course it was; that was the whole point.

But _Griddy’s_ was still a smouldering pile of bricks. Weird.

Five never did find out what happened there.

All he knows is that, over the next several months, someone else bought up the plot of land and built the Seven Star Diner in its place.

The diner lacks a lot of what Griddy’s had. It lacks most of the memories. It lacks the one booth in the back corner with the broken cushion that Klaus, from age nine to at least thirteen, had always claimed as his own when they all snuck out here. It lacks the stain in the far wall that the owners never _quite_ managed to scrub out; that one had been thanks to Luther, age twelve, puking after Diego dared him to eat a full dozen donuts.

But there are some things the Seven Star Diner has that Griddy’s never did. New memories.

If you ask Claire, this diner has the best donut in the _whole entire world_ — a chocolate one topped with toasted marshmallows — and it’s the place where _she_ threw up all over the floor by the register two years ago, because puking donuts in a public establishment is apparently a rite of passage in this family. If you ask Diego, the air conditioning alone is reason enough to stop by for a visit. If you ask Klaus, the mega fries are the real reason to come. And if you ask Five, the place has far better food than Griddy’s ever did, and it’s got better coffee than anything he can make at home.

Its biggest selling point, though, is probably Rochelle.

In the first few months following the averted Apocalypse, Rochelle was working through the beginning of a degree at the local community college, and thanks to some combination of sleep deprivation and having seen _everything_ working in this place, she seemed to be the only waitress in the tri-state area willing to serve an entire pot of strong black coffee to a thirteen-year-old, no questions asked. By that virtue alone she quickly became one of Five’s favorite people.

Which, luckily, hasn’t changed all that much in three years.

“Your table is looking startlingly devoid of textbooks for once,” Rochelle says, refilling his half-empty mug. “Not feeling the physics today, huh?”

“Not today, no,” Five answers. “Waiting on someone, actually.”

“Ooh, family?”

He shoots her a look. “No, Rochelle. Diego is not coming.”

She sputters for a second, but it’s all for show, a bemused smile giving her away. “What? When? _When_ did I say anything about Diego?”

“You don’t need to.”

“Why?” she asks with a sly smile, leaning against the side of the opposite booth seat and batting her eyes at Five in a way that reminds him all too much of Klaus. “Was he asking about me?”

“Was he asking about a waitress he barely knows who’s a _decade_ younger than him?” Five asks, taking another sip of his coffee. “Shockingly, no.”

“Oh, you’re no fun.”

Five lowers his coffee and raises an eyebrow at her. “Don’t they have boys at your school? Boys your own age who don’t beat people up for a living?”

She rolls her eyes, still smiling. “Look, man, I know you’re technically as old as my dad—”

“I’m _older_ than your dad—”

“— but it’s still a little disturbing when you talk so much like him. You know. Looking like…” she points at him with her free hand, waving her finger in a circle, “… this.”

Without waiting for a response, she twists at the waist, peering over her shoulder to sweep an eye over the other tables. The place is far from crowded, even during the lunch rush, but Five is still definitely not her only customer. Then she lets out a weary sigh, straightening up and topping off his mug one more time.

“Well, I’ll grab you a paper, at least,” she says.

“I’m fine.”

“You need a distraction, old man,” she calls over her shoulder, already walking away to the next table. “Seriously. I could hear you thinking from all the way behind the counter.”

Five smirks and sags back into his seat, cradling his coffee in both hands as he lets his gaze drift out the window.

She’s probably right. A distraction wouldn’t be entirely unwelcome.

 _Especially_ given that he might be sitting here waiting for nothing.

He had spent about four hours in the illegally furnished residence of Nikhil Burman yesterday, reading up on sign language for lack of anything better to do, brushing up on what little he remembers from those early days when Allison couldn’t speak through her injury.

(His knowledge of sign language then, of course, was mostly limited to the alphabet and some of the key phrases Allison used most often — things like _when was the last time you ate_ and _you need to sleep_ and _stop being an asshole,_ for instance, are still ingrained in his memory three years later.)

When Five grew bored of that, he sat and watched the light streaming in through the windows, watched as the bar of sunlit dust motes rose higher and higher as the sun dipped lower and lower. When it became clear that Nikhil either had no plans to return there for the night or, somehow, knew Five was there and thus was actively avoiding the place, Five tore a page out of the back of the textbook and left the kid a note.

He’d been straightforward enough, he thinks, and just cryptic enough that it would have left the kid with some questions. _You’re not the only one,_ he’d written. _Meet at Seven Star Diner tomorrow afternoon. Just want to talk. Ask for 5._

Choosing a public place in broad daylight, he’d thought, might make the kid feel a little more in control of the situation. Not specifying a time, too, might have the same effect.

Let him show up when he wants. Five can wait.

 

 

Over time, Allison’s noticed that the mind has a way of cherry picking memories it wants to hold onto. And that’s usually with no regard at all to whether _she_ would like to hold onto them or not.

That tumultuous time they spent trying to prevent the end of the world is a bit of a blur now that three years have passed. There are whole days where she might as well have not been there for how difficult it is to remember, events that get all jumbled up. What was that officer’s name again? Had Diego gotten arrested before or after Vanya lost control in that parking lot? She has no idea.

But then certain bits and pieces will stand out in vivid technicolor; she remembers, _entirely_ too well, Five bleeding out as she and Diego carried him from Harold Jenkins’ house, his head lolling back against her chest, him murmuring insistently, incoherently, _stupidly,_ about the angle of shrapnel trajectories and time dilation and _no hospitals, Allison, just take me home._ She remembers his blood on her hands afterward. She remembers the cramped space of the phone booth with Luther, even while the fight immediately after is nothing but a haze of flashing lights and gunshots. She remembers standing on the stage of the Icarus Theater gripping Vanya’s hand so tight she lost feeling in her fingers by the time Five’s jump was done.

Most vivid of all, though, is after. Or, specifically, her first return to L.A. when all was said and done. She can’t forget when she stepped out onto the airport carpet and against all expectation saw _her little girl_ waiting there at the gate. She can’t forget the way Claire _shrieked_ upon seeing her, how she sprinted up so quickly that Allison barely had time to sink to her knees to catch her baby girl in a tight hug.

She also remembers Patrick. She remembers being so grateful that he brought Claire to see her at all. She remembers how he offered a tight smile, for Claire’s sake, but how easy it was for Allison to see through it — because really, there are some things you just can’t hide from someone who’s been with you for nearly a decade. His posture then was all she needed to see that he would have rather been just about _anywhere_ else.

She imagines his posture now probably mirrors it. The tense shoulders. The way he only bites the right side of his lip. Fingers flexing like he wants to hold onto something.

Her anxiety hikes up a notch. _All that work wasted,_ it tells her in a voice that always, always sounds like her father. _Three years of progress and look where it brought you, right back to the beginning._

Allison shakes her head, squashes that feeling down, and tightens her grip on the phone.

She hears Patrick let out a slow breath.

“You’re sure?”

Allison nods even though he can’t see it. “I am.”

“And she can’t—”

“No,” she cuts him off, because she knows exactly what he’s going to ask. Both of their worst fears. “She can’t do what I can do.”

“So, what? What can she do?”

“She can… tell what other people are feeling.”

A beat. Allison gulps. She can hear voices in the background, someone shouting. He’s got to be on set, was probably in the middle of filming when she called. Then he says, “Allison, that’s not a superpower. _I_ can tell what other people are feeling.”

“I know,” she admits. “I know, just… trust me on this, okay?”

And she knows, she _knows_ how this must seem to him. Allison finally gets partial custody after all this time, only to wisk his daughter off to the other side of the country and _immediately_ discover that their little girl has inherited the one thing that had driven her parents apart in the first place. The one thing that can ruin a life in ways that Patrick knows so, so well by now. Better than anyone.

“We think she might have been able to do this for a while,” she says when his silence has stretched a little too long. “And we never noticed because — like you said, it doesn’t seem like anything out of the ordinary. Not at first.”

Again, he stays silent for a little too long. Long enough that her heart rate spikes again.

“Patrick, she’s still the same Claire—”

“I know she is,” Patrick interrupts, quiet but no less tense. “I know she is. It’s just…”

Allison sighs and leans her back to the wall. “I know.”

He sighs, too. She can practically see him massaging the bridge of his nose. “No offense, Allison, but you _really_ don’t.”

She bites her lip for a second. “Yeah. I guess not.”

“Is she okay?”

“Yeah. Yeah, she’s fine.”

And it’s the truth. Allison’s honestly still a little shocked at how well her daughter’s been handling all of this. In fact, just yesterday, as if to drive the point home that she _is_ handling it startlingly well, Claire had walked right up to Allison out of nowhere, hugged her around the waist, and said, _It’s okay, Mommy, I’m gonna be real careful and use my superpowers right, so you don’t have to be scared for me._

Allison sighs, rubbing her temple. Her baby girl being able to tell, intrinsically, what her parents are feeling is something that changes nearly _every_ aspect of parenting that Allison’s worked so hard at learning over the years. And that’s not even touching into whether Claire can _alter_ emotions, too.

It’s gonna be a learning curve. For everyone, not just for her.

“Okay,” Patrick huffs. “Okay. Yeah, I can— I’m stuck on set all day today, but maybe I can catch a red eye tonight, and—”

Allison blinks. “What, you’re coming here?”

“Of course I am,” he says, sounding offended that she even asked. “My daughter’s going through… what, _superhero puberty?_ That’s— I mean, look, I always knew this was in the cards from day one. I signed up for all this craziness, sure, but _she_ didn’t. This is a big change for her. She needs her dad.”

“But… here?”

“Yes, there. Where Claire is. Where else?”

“I just… I don’t know, I thought you would try to make me bring her back to L.A.”

There’s a pause on the other end, and then she hears him huff another sigh, one that’s laced with a sort of tired sympathy. “Obviously I want her here in L.A.,” he admits. “But I’m not about to cut her vacation short. She’ll think it’s some kind of punishment. I don’t want her thinking I’m punishing her for something she can’t control, or — you know, for something that’s just a part of who she _is._ I never want her thinking that.”

There’s something in his tone that Allison has become intimately familiar with over these past few years, the quiet and patient tone he uses whenever he spells out for her exactly why he’s doing something a certain way.

It’s a tone she only began hearing after the joint therapy sessions started, after the childhood she always kept hidden or carefully scrubbed and sanitized and sugar coated finally began coming to light, in all its gruesome bits and pieces. Things he had never dreamed she’d been through. Things she had long since rumored him out of ever asking about.

 _Pay attention,_ that tone says. _This is how a dad is supposed to act._

“I could probably get out early today,” he says, pulling her from that train of thought. “I can say it’s a family emergency, which—”

“Patrick,” Allison interrupts, carefully gentle. “It’s not an emergency. Really. You don’t have to jump on the next flight. Claire’s fine.”

“I believe you,” he says, which in itself is something of a miracle. “But I’m still coming.”

“I know, I’m just saying it doesn’t have to be _right_ now,” Allison tells him. “If you want to drop everything and come right this second, obviously I’m not gonna stop you, but Claire’s really fine. And be honest, are you _really_ in that much of a hurry to sleep in the same house as my family? As _Diego?”_

“I’m not… _that_ afraid of Diego.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I’m not,” Patrick insists, and she can hear a slight smile in his voice. Some of her own tension leaks away. “Really, I’m not. Even if the only thing protecting me from him is the fact that Claire would be upset if I got stabbed, at least, you know, _something’s_ protecting me. Now, Five, on the other hand…”

Allison laughs. “You know one of my brothers is an _actual_ ghost, right?”

“Seriously? You think I’d be afraid of Ben? He’s the only one in that house who was nice to me right off the bat,” Patrick tells her, which is definitely true. He’s quiet for a few seconds, and then he sighs again, this time all heavy and theatrical — reminding Allison once again that Claire didn’t only inherit her melodrama from _her._ “Okay, okay, _fine._ You win. I’ll finish up my shoot and book a flight at the end of the week. You’re sure you’ve got everything handled until then?”

“I’m sure.”

“Okay. Where’s Claire now?”

“She’s in the kitchen with Mom,” she says. The three of them just got back from grocery shopping, and considering Allison’s left them alone for a whole ten minutes, she would bet anything that Mom’s already halfway through teaching Claire how to make a perfect seven-tiered cake or something else equally destined to cause a huge mess.

Actually, now that she’s listening for it, she can hear the clang of dishes and Klaus’ voice joining in on the chaos. Yeah. Definitely going to be a huge mess sooner rather than later.

“And you’re sure she’s okay?”

“Yes, Patrick, I’m sure,” she says. “We’re the only ones freaking out over this, not Claire. Trust me.”

There’s a pause. “I do,” Patrick tells her, quietly and earnestly. “Have her call me later, okay? I miss her.”

“I know. I will.”

“Okay.”

“See you this weekend, then?”

“Definitely. Yeah, for sure,” he says. “I gotta get back to work, but — Allison?”

“Yeah?”

“Thank you,” he says. “For… you know, for telling me.”

Allison smiles, again nodding before remembering that he can’t see it. “Yeah. Of course.”

“See you soon.”

“Mm-hmm. See you.”

 

 

“No-show, huh?”

Five blinks, looking up from his newspaper and raising his eyebrows as Rochelle drops into the seat across from him. She’s got a croissant wrapped in a napkin in one hand and an iced coffee — by name only, in Five’s opinion, since it’s essentially a glass of milk and sugar with a splash of espresso in it — in the other, and she slides the croissant toward him and lifts her coffee, sipping through the straw and raising her eyebrows right back at him.

“I didn’t order a croissant,” Five finally says.

She shrugs. “On the house,” she says, takes one last sip of her coffee, and sets it down. “So? They’re a no-show, right? The somebody you were waiting for?”

Five opens his mouth, hesitates. “Not… necessarily.”

Rochelle gives him a look, one that clearly states she doesn’t believe him, and Five can’t honestly say he blames her. He rolls his eyes, folding up the newspaper and setting it aside.

“Yeah, they’re a no-show,” he admits, tearing a corner off the croissant and instantly realizing he’s _starving._ How long has he been sitting here? Five hours? Six? It’s still light outside, but given it’s the dead of summer, that doesn’t mean much — and sure enough, when he checks his watch, it already reads 7:43. _Eight hours_ he’s been sitting around reading the newspaper. Well, that and working through some new equations in the margins. He sighs. “Kind of expected this, though. The kid doesn’t know me, so he has no reason to trust me.”

“A kid, huh?”

Five nods. “Fifteen.”

“And he’s not family?”

He hesitates for a second, peeling off bits of the croissant one at a time. “Well. Technically not. Kind of? It’s… complicated.”

Rochelle hums through another sip of her coffee. “This is more crazy superhero stuff, isn’t it?”

“Afraid so.”

“Still a kid, though.”

Five nods. “Still a kid, though,” he agrees, drumming his fingers on the table. Then a new thought occurs to him, and he asks, “Hey, how old are you now, Rochelle, twenty-two? You’re kind of a kid, too, right? Or close to it, anyway.”

Rochelle snorts. “God knows I’m not an _adult._ Why?”

“I don’t know, I’m trying to figure out why this kid is doing what he’s doing,” Five admits. “He just… None of it makes sense to me.”

“And you want my young, naïve wisdom?”

Five chews thoughtfully, shrugs. “Your perspective, I guess.”

“Alright, man. Shoot.”

Five tears off another piece of croissant, chews, thinks, and swallows. “Well, he’s got powers like we do, right? And we think he might have been raised to hide them, but now he’s blatantly using them to steal from jewelry stores and flip cars. It took me less than a day to put it all together, so clearly he’s not trying to hide it _anymore.”_

Rochelle shrugs, sipping her coffee down to the bottom until bubbles are all that come through the straw. “Maybe he just got tired of hiding it. Wouldn’t you?”

Five shakes his head. He doesn’t think that’s it, but he doesn’t really have a better explanation, so he moves on. “Then there’s the fact that he’s squatting in his dead mother’s house rather than staying in any of the _twelve_ foster homes that have taken him in over the last year. He dropped out of school, too, but there’s a big stack of books in his bedroom that look like they’re getting a lot of use, including a few nonfiction books and textbooks, so… I don’t know, he _wants_ to learn, apparently. So why drop out of school?”

Rochelle leans from side to side, mulling it over. “To be fair, if I had superpowers when I was fifteen you couldn’t have _paid_ me to stay in school instead of, like, running off to be a superhero or something.”

“He’s not being a superhero, though.”

“Right, yeah.” She nods, then her brow creases. “Did you say he’s flipping cars?”

Five shrugs one shoulder. “One car. But that’s not really—” he cuts himself off, shaking his head. “I get that part, sort of. Doing things like that just because you _can,_ it’s a natural result of someone having abilities like these without having the maturity to handle it with restraint. It’s mostly the dropping out of school thing I don’t get.”

Something about that seems to amuse her. She gives a lopsided smile and asks, “Do you even _remember_ what high school was like?”

“I never went to high school. Or, you know, _any_ school. None of us did.”

“Ah,” she says, nodding. “Well, I can think of about a million reasons why a kid might drop out of school, even a kid that still wants to learn.”

“Like what?”

She shrugs. “Bullies. Other kids not getting along with him. Maybe he doesn’t have any friends there, and going to school makes him feel lonely. Maybe he’s scared they won’t accept him if they find out he’s—” she waves at Five — “you know, different. Maybe someone _did_ find out he’s different and they freaked out about it. And even without superpowers, I mean, it could be anything. A teacher he doesn’t like, someone he _does_ like who doesn’t like him back, classes he’s failing… Hell, it could be something that seems totally stupid to us. I once refused to go to school for a whole week because I had a zit on my nose.”

Five raises an eyebrow. “That’s ridiculous.”

“I was a ridiculous kid,” she says. “So are a _lot_ of kids. That’s your problem.”

“What’s my problem?”

“You’re thinking too much like an adult,” she tells him, pointing at him with the rest of her hand still gripping the top of her coffee cup. “What do I always tell you? You gotta loosen up a little. Relax.”

“I don’t need to loosen up. And I’m _perfectly_ relaxed.”

“It’s like watching some poor kid possessed by the ghost of my grandpa,” Rochelle deadpans, shaking her head. “Tragic.”

Five flicks a croissant crumb at her.

She grins, wide and toothy and genuine, pointing at him again. “Ah-ha, see? Now you’re getting it!”

“What, so you’re saying in order for me to understand the teenager, I have to _be_ the teenager?” Five asks, wrinkling his nose as he sweeps up his croissant crumbs with the napkin and crumbles it up. He slides out of the seat, adjusting his jacket as he goes. “That is _horribly_ clichéd advice, even for you.”

“I’m just saying,” Rochelle drones, lowering her gaze to her coffee as she starts shifting the straw around, likely searching for any last dregs at the bottom. “Maybe stop thinking about this kid like he’s a math problem. Especially if he’s technically-not-but-kind-of family. And you know how _kid_ kids work, sort of, so one that’s a little closer to grown up shouldn’t be that hard to—” She gasps, hitting the heel of her palm to her forehead. “Oh! _Duh!_ That reminds me.”

She stands and crosses over to the counter in a few quick strides, and she sticks her tongue out in concentration as she leans over it to reach for something on the other side.

“Almost forgot.” She pulls up a paper bag and spins around to face him, placing it reverentially in his hand. “One chocolate marshmallow donut to go.”

Five rolls his eyes, but he takes the bag anyway. “I didn’t order that, either.”

“Yeah, yeah, Uncle of the Year. Look me in the eye and tell me you weren’t going to.”

“Well, _obviously_ I was going to,” Five says, heading for the door. “But now when Allison blames me for the sugar rush I can tell her it’s all _your_ fault.”

“The cross I bear to be that kid’s favorite waitress,” she sighs, looking down and taking a moment to slurp bubbles through the straw. “If only teenagers were that easy to win over, huh?”

“If only,” Five agrees, stepping out of the air conditioning into a veritable wall of summer heat. “See you tomorrow, Rochelle.”

“Mm-hmm. Tell Diego I said hi!”

Damn it. She definitely heard him laugh at that. “Good- _bye,_ Rochelle.”

Her giggling cuts off as the screen door clangs shut behind him, and he squints against the harsh sunlight outside. The sun is hanging low in the sky, just above the horizon and blurred behind an ever-shifting hazy mist. Summer has long since latched its muggy, stifling grip on the city and hasn’t let go for weeks, to the point that Five’s been out here for thirty seconds and _already_ feels like he’s walking through hot soup.

That was one thing the Apocalypse had never had, though. Humidity. There was no moisture in the air whatsoever, just a morbid, dry heat year-round.

So at the beginning, when they’d first averted the end of the world, Five had _loved_ the humidity. He hadn’t given one single shit that it made his shirt cling to his skin, or that he’d be out of breath after walking in it for more than a few minutes, or that he’d need a shower the _moment_ he returned home. He just didn’t care. It was enough, in those days, to know instinctively that he couldn’t possibly be _there_ anymore, not when the air felt like this.

The novelty has long since worn off, though. Maria would call that progress; Five calls it a pain in the ass.

He blinks into the nearest taxi, letting out a pleased sigh at the feel of the air conditioning pumping through the vents.

“What the—?”

“The library on 9th,” Five cuts the cab driver off. He leans back in the seat, and the driver shakes off the initial shock, as they always tend to do, and starts rolling down the street toward the library.

 

 

A couple of hours have passed by the time Five gets home, and by now the sun’s finally dipped down over the horizon, pulling the city out of its dreary sweltering haze of sunlight and into an equally dreary, equally sweltering haze of moonlight. He jumps from the taxi to the Academy foyer to avoid dealing with it, keeping careful hold of the paper bag with Claire’s donut, and he touches down on the hardwood to find the place _surprisingly_ quiet.

It only takes one more jump for Five to understand why. Or at least to reach someone who does.

“Hey, Mom,” he says as he lands in the kitchen.

“Oh! Hello, Five, dear.”

Mom turns away from the dishes she’s been cleaning — dishes she’s been pulling out of the drying rack, rewashing, and placing back in the drying rack, which is as sure a sign as any that Claire had attempted to wash the dishes for her and Mom hadn’t had the heart to tell her not to bother — and she smiles at him, mechanically wiping a plate dry.

“How was your day?”

Five shrugs, glancing around the kitchen. There’s four cakes sitting in a row on the counter, each a different size and shape and flavor than the last, each encased in an expertly applied protective shell of cling wrap, and each with several slices already cut out of them. A few splotches of batter can be seen clinging to the ceiling, likely because that’s the only bit of the mess Mom hadn’t been able to reach, and won’t be until she pulls out the stepstool.

It doesn’t take a genius to see how _her_ day has been. She’s practically beaming. It’s a sight that was all but unheard of during their childhoods, and one that’s become more and more common in the last few years.

A nice sight, for sure.

“Not bad,” Five answers. “Lost track of the time, I guess. Where is everyone, anyway?”

She tilts her head, her eyes going vacant for a second as she accesses her memory banks, and then she blinks and smiles at him again. “Claire, Allison, Vanya, and Luther have all gone to bed early for the night. Diego is picking Klaus up from his weekly meeting, and Ben is… somewhere around here,” she says, smiling and looking around like she expects him to manifest out of the ether. “I don’t believe Klaus is able to use his powers over such a long distance at the moment. Must have tired himself out, the poor dear.”

“Yeah? Doing what?”

Her smile brightens as she places the plate back on the drying rack. “Why, helping the rest of us bake, of course.”

That explains the batter on the ceiling, at least. Five smirks, tucking his free hand into his pocket. “Well. Sorry I missed it.”

“Oh, not to worry, dear,” Mom tells him, and her heels click across the kitchen tile as she closes the distance between them, leaning over to press a kiss to the top of his head — because Five has long since learned that nothing, up to and including the knowledge that one of her children is now in his sixties, is going to stop Mom from babying every single one of them. “There will be _plenty_ more opportunities.”

“Yeah, I’m sure.”

She straightens up to her full height and fixes his collar, then brushes the hair away from his forehead, tutting and shaking her head. And before she can remind him, as she does every day, that _we really must cut this, dear, it’s getting far too long,_ Five asks, “Hey, did Klaus mention anything about trying to conjure another ghost, too?”

Mom hums, nodding once before stepping back and returning to the dishes. “Oh, yes, that’s right. He said you’re all trying to find that poor boy who lost his mother, is that right?”

“Mm-hmm. Don’t suppose he had any luck with that.”

“No, I don’t believe so. Or if he did, he didn’t think to mention it.”

“Yeah,” Five sighs. “None on my end, either.”

“Oh, don’t sound so put out,” Mom tells him. “You kids can do anything you set your minds to. I have _no_ doubt that success is just around the corner, dear.”

Five huffs a laugh, not quite believing her but not having the heart to tell her so. Because really, outside of camping out in the kid’s room, Five’s starting to run out of options at this point. So much for Luther’s whole _maybe he’ll come to us_ idea.

He shakes his head and makes his way toward the stairs. “Night, Mom.”

“Goodnight, sweetheart.”

Mom’s gentle humming fades behind him as he heads upstairs in the general direction of his siblings’ bedrooms, trudging up the stairs the old fashioned way. Theoretically he _could_ jump straight up to his own bedroom on the third floor, but… Well. He knows himself fairly well by now, certainly well enough to know that — even on nights like tonight when he doesn’t _feel_ particularly anxious — nightmares are always a possibility. And those nightmares are far, far easier to shake off when he’s checked on his idiot siblings before going to bed.

Plus, he’s got to drop off Claire’s donut.

Vanya’s is the first room he passes. Her door is thrown wide open, her windows cracked to let the sounds of the city filter in, the curtains swaying in the breeze. Five leans his shoulder against the door frame, letting his eyes adjust until the dim shapes in her bedroom sharpen into the desk and the music stand and the dresser and the bed. He waits until he can see the bundle of sheets on the bed that can only be his littlest sister, waits until he can see the slow rise and fall of her breathing, and waits a little longer. Just because he can.

Then he moves on.

The door to Claire’s room is also wide open but with the lights still on, and when Five pokes his head in the doorway he finds both Allison and Claire fast asleep in the bed. Allison must have fallen asleep reading her a bedtime story; it’d hardly be the first time.

As quietly as possible, Five jumps to Claire’s bedside table, clicks off the light, places the paper bag where she’ll see it as soon as she wakes up, and jumps back out into the hallway.

Last but not least is Luther. Five can hear his snoring before he even passes his bedroom door, and he’ll likely be able to hear it all night given that his bedroom is directly above Luther’s, but Five pokes a finger to his door until it creaks open a few inches anyway. Luther is, predictably, all but entirely starfished on his stomach on the bed, his blankets tangled up around his ankles and his giant arms wrapped tight around his pillow.

Five smirks, rolls his eyes, and makes the final jump up to his own bedroom to turn in for the night—

— and he knows, instantly, _instinctively,_ that something is off.

Shit.

His hands, already automatically reaching to undo his tie, freeze along with the rest of him as soon as his shoes touch the floor. His shoulders stiffen, the power coiling somewhere above his gut, ready to jettison him across the room at a moment’s notice if he needs it to.

Before he can decide whether he _does_ need it to, though, a voice sounds from directly behind him.

“You know,” the voice says, clipped and quiet and carefully casual. Young, vaguely defensive. Tense and pretending not to be. “You could’ve _told_ me you were just a kid. Thought you were a cop this whole time.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> we found him ladies! we made it
> 
> (also i was so happy to remember that i set this whole fic in summertime so i had an excuse to vent my frustrations about this god. damn. _heat._ )
> 
> next time: we finally meet nikhil! woo!


	12. some kind of weird professor x

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Five meets the elusive speedster, and he makes some introductions.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> uhhhhh tw for mention of hard drugs, because klaus was at his meeting tonight
> 
> and, once again, i've upped the number of chapters because i've lost all control of my life and this fic just KEEPS ON GIVING I GUESS ajsjdhdhdl
> 
> anywho
> 
> let's meet this kid already, yeah?

 

_June 8th, 2022_

 

“You could’ve  _told_ me you were just a kid. Thought you were a cop this whole time.”

Five hesitates, one hand on his tie.

There are three things he knows for certain at this moment:

One, there is a stranger in his bedroom who he very much did not invite here, in his house, where most of the rest of his family is currently sleeping.

Two, that stranger is almost certainly fifteen-year-old Nikhil Burman.

And that leads into number three, which is really just the logical extrapolation from the first two: There is a stranger in his house who he very much did not invite here, who is young and endowed with that youthful impulsive stupidity that Five is pretty damn sure is universal to _all_ teenagers, and who can run faster than the speed of sound and who only yesterday _might_ have made an — albeit sloppy — attempt on Five’s and his brothers’ lives.

Great. Fantastic.

Still, Five is more than trained to handle a situation like this. Or perhaps not exactly like this, but he’s nothing if not adaptable.

And besides, the kid doesn’t _sound_ particularly murderous.

“Alright,” Five says, calm and steady as he purposely relaxes out of a defensive stance. “Let’s get that out of the way first, shall we? Not a kid.”

He turns, slowly, mindful to look out for any sudden movements — which may be the only kind of movements this kid is _capable_ of for all he knows — and he finds Nikhil facing him, sitting cross-legged on the bed.

On _Five’s_ bed, just sitting there like he owns the place. He looks about how Five remembers from the photo in his file, but he’s a little taller and thinner than Five had expected. He’s all lanky knees and elbows in dark wash jeans swimming in a hooded sweatshirt, hunched in on himself with his hands in his pockets and his shoulders tense like he’s prepared to bolt at a moment’s notice.

His eyes, nearly hidden in shadow beneath his hood and a mop of wavy black hair, are fixed squarely on Five.

“I just look like one,” Five continues with a shrug.

Nikhil’s frown deepens, his eyes narrowing on Five before he glances toward the door. Five recognizes the intent there, the mapping out of an escape route. Just in case.

“It gets a little… complicated,” Five admits, and because he’s _still_ not sure how he’s supposed to talk to a teenager he settles with striking some sort of balance between gentle, like he’s talking to a kid, and straightforward, like he’s talking to an adult. It feels a bit like he’s walking a tightrope, but he can manage. “And while it would certainly be _easier_ to let you go on believing I’m the age that I look, I think it’d be a lot better for everyone if you and I were honest with each other from the get-go. Don’t you?”

He tucks his hands into his pockets, scrutinizing the kid and trying his best not to make it too obvious that he’s scrutinizing him.

“What do you think?” Five asks when no answer comes. “Can you do that?”

Still Nikhil only stares at him, scrutinizing him right back, his brow furrowed.

What, is he waiting until Five asks a question he’s willing to answer? Is he trying to decide whether to humor his questions at all? Or is he—?

“Oh,” Five says, eyes widening. Duh. Obviously. Why hadn’t he thought of that before?

God, he could hit himself, he’s such an idiot sometimes. And a voice somewhere in the back of his head that might be Dolores but sounds more like Diego says,  _Not everybody learns new shit just for the hell of it, man. Most people only go to all that trouble when they_ have  _to. That seriously never occur to you?_

“Right. Shit, um…”

He takes a second to remember the motions, and then signs the words _you_ and _hear_ and _me,_ raising an eyebrow at the end to make it clear it’s a question.

Again, for a moment, he receives no answer. Nikhil only continues to stare, only continues to frown at Five like he’s a bit confused by Five’s entire existence.

And then, finally, the kid huffs a petulant little sigh and rolls his eyes.

“I can read lips, man,” he says.

Ah. Right, then. Five tucks his hands back into his pockets, nodding. He’ll just have to remember to face the kid when he talks to him, then. Easy enough.

“And what do you mean, you only look like one?” Nikhil asks. “Look like one what?”

His voice is low, like he’s afraid someone else in the house might hear him. His voice is lacking any accent, too, Five notices, which means the kid was probably raised in this area _and_ that the hearing loss must have been relatively recent.

Five files that information away for later. Now’s not the time.

“Tell you what,” Five says. “This is a conversation I’d _much_ rather have over coffee.” He tilts his head. “Obviously, given I wanted to meet at the diner. We have some here I can make, though. You drink coffee?”

At that, Nikhil scowls like he’s just smelled something awful, and Five almost laughs.

Right. He hated coffee at that age, too, didn’t he? Only ever started choking it down after about a year in the Apocalypse, when he’d stumbled upon a box of instant granules and was growing increasingly more desperate to fill his waking hours with equations — and, consequently, desperate to _extend_ his waking hours with whatever he could find.

It’s an acquired taste. He forgets that sometimes.

“Okay, well, _I’m_ going to have coffee. _You_ can have whatever else you want,” Five says, and he looks the kid over one more time. “When was the last time you ate, anyway?”

Nikhil hesitates, glances away, and then shrugs one shoulder.

“I’ll go ahead and take that as ‘a really long time.’ Meet me in the kitchen, then?” Five asks. “It’s on the basement floor, all the way down the stairs and then to the left.”

The kid frowns, his brows creasing again and his shoulders going rigid. His eyes flick over to the door.

“You can relax,” Five tells him. “Really. You’re not in any danger here. No one’s going to try to arrest you or turn you in to any authorities or anything — or, well, _I’m_ certainly not gonna go to all that trouble. And I doubt Mom would ever even think of it, and she and I are the only people in the house who are awake, so.”

He shrugs. The look on Nikhil’s face doesn’t change, and Five waits for an answer, _any_ answer at all, eyeing the kid down for a few tense and silent moments before he finally gives up and heaves a sigh.

“Look,” Five says to him. “Either you can trust me, or you can’t. That much is up to you to decide. But regardless, _I’m_ going to go downstairs to make some coffee. You can follow me and listen to what I have to say,  _or_ you can run out of here as fast as your legs will take you — which as I understand it is no trivial thing — and in all likelihood you’ll never hear from me again.”

Technically that’s a lie, of course, since Diego’s not going to just let this case go, and Five doubts _any_ of his siblings are going to leave this kid be, not now that they know who he is.

But the kid doesn’t know that. Not yet.

“You can follow me downstairs,” Five says, “or you can run away, and you can keep on running and acting like you’re the only person in the world who can do the things we can do. Your choice.”

He shrugs again, then tilts his head toward the door.

“Kitchen. Basement floor, all the way down the stairs and to the left.”

Without another word, he turns on his heel and disappears through a tear in spacetime.

When he reappears, it’s exactly where he’d blinked to when he first got home, right at the center of the kitchen floor. And Mom, true to form, hardly bats an eye despite him quite literally appearing from nothing entirely unannounced.

Again. For the second time in under an hour.

“Hello again, dear,” she says, having apparently finished the dishes, given that she’s now moved on to pulling a series of pots and pans out of the cabinets for… some reason. Five does his best not to question her most of the time. “Did you change your mind about turning in for the night?”

“Uh. Yeah, I did.” He winces, realizing that _maybe_ he should have given her a bit of warning about the total stranger that’s about to come down to the kitchen. “Also—”

There’s a thrum of static from the direction of the stairs, and because Five had already been warily watching the kitchen doorway, he sees the kid’s entrance as it happens. Or he _kind_ of sees it, anyway, like one second the doorway is empty and the next second it’s just… not. The transition is marked only by that strange staticky sound and by what Five thinks must be that distortion of the light that Luther had been talking about, and then, all at once, there’s a wide-eyed teenager standing in the doorway.

“Yeah,” Five says, waving vaguely at him. “That.”

“Oh! Hello,” Mom says, taking it in stride like she does everything else. “Are you a friend of Five’s?”

“Mom, this is Nikhil. He’s the kid we were talking about earlier? Remember?”

“Oh, of _course,”_ she says, smiling one of her sweetest smiles at him and inclining her head in greeting. “It is just _lovely_ to meet you, Nikhil. I’m Five’s mother, but you are more than welcome to call me Grace.”

At some point in his breakneck dash down the stairs, the kid’s hood had been thrown back, and now Five can see him a bit more clearly. He looks younger now, more baby faced with his curls tousled in every direction and his wide eyes shifting back and forth between the strange smiling woman in front of him and the teleporting teenager he doesn’t yet know isn’t actually a teenager.

Then, finally, although he’s looking more skittish by the second and is _definitely_ thrown off by Mom’s extra friendliness, Nikhil offers a tight-lipped smile and stammers a little bit as he answers, “Uh— hi, Miss, um. Miss Grace.”

“See, now, Five?” Mom asks. “What did I tell you, sweetheart? Success was just around the corner, wasn’t it?”

Five blinks, raising his eyebrows.

Huh. He’d… actually forgotten she said that at all.

“A mother always knows best,” she continues. “Now, Nikhil, would you like anything to eat? I was just about to start up a batch of chicken soup to pack into portions for the rest of the week, but I would be _more_ than happy to serve some up fresh as it’s ready.”

“Oh, I— uh, thank you, Miss Grace,” Nikhil says. “But I’m okay.”

“Nonsense! A growing boy needs his nutrition. I should know, I’ve only raised five of them.”

“It’s really not worth refusing,” Five tells him, shrugging one shoulder. “Trust me.”

“Or, if you prefer,” Mom continues undeterred, “I could always make something else. Do you have any food allergies or dietary restrictions? I have a whole host of vegetarian and vegan dishes I’ve been reading up on, and I would just _love_ the excuse to try one of them.”

And it’s almost funny, Five thinks. The kid’s attitude and all his standoffish bravado — which Five already suspected was a front in the first place — has all but vanished in the face of Mom’s smiling and unerring hospitality. Only the wariness remains, which Five supposes is fair.

He _did_ break into the kid’s house, after all.

“I… um, no, I don’t have allergies,” Nikhil tells her, hunching in on himself a little more. Five could swear he even sees the kid gulp. “And that’s… fine. Soup’s fine. Thank you.”

“Wonderful! Why don’t you have a seat, dear?”

He looks at Five, then at the kitchen table, then at Mom, and then at Five again. Five just shrugs and teleports into the seat opposite the one that Mom had indicated, and eventually Nikhil makes his way to sit down, too, walking slowly and deliberately and still looking _very_ ready to run away.

“Mom, you mind putting a pot of coffee on?”

“Not at all, dear.”

“Thanks,” Five says, leaning back in the seat and looking the kid over once again.

Nikhil takes a slow breath, his shoulders sinking a bit. “Your mom’s… uh. Nice.”

“Oh, why _thank_ you,” Mom says, pulling out a huge assortment of ingredients from the pantry and piling them into her arms.

“Mom, you’ll want to make sure Nikhil can see your face when you talk to him,” Five tells her. “Or use sign language.”

Nikhil raises an eyebrow. “Your mom knows sign language?”

“My mom knows every language. She said thank you, by the way,” Five tells him, watching as she slides a plate in front of Nikhil with a slice of cake on it, pulled from one of the four she and the rest of his siblings made during their baking extravaganza earlier today.

“To hold you over until the soup is ready, dear,” she says, this time facing him and, still, with that unbothered smile on her face.

Nikhil nods. “Thank— um, thank you.”

He picks up the fork she gave him, nervously glancing at her while trying to keep Five in his peripheral, and then starts poking at the cake, essentially just moving it around on his plate rather than eating any of it yet. Every so often he shoots a furtive glance around the room, but for the most part he keeps his eyes on Five.

Still wary, still anything but trusting.

“So,” Five finally says. “How about we start over? That sound good?” He places a hand on his chest. “Five. Five Hargreeves.”

Nikhil wrinkles his nose. “Your name’s _really_ Five? Like the number?”

“It is,” Five answers with a nod, offering a grateful smile up at Mom as she places a cup of coffee in front of him. “And what I was saying earlier, up in my room—” _where you broke in,_ he wants to say, but then again that would feel pretty hypocritical of him, so he decides against it — “was that I’m not a kid. I look like one, due to an effect that essentially boils down to simple quantum mechanics, but in reality I’m closer to sixty-one years old. Give or take.”

The kid’s eyes narrow.

“You’re… sixty.”

Five takes a sip of his coffee. “Mm. Give or take.”

“And… she,” Nikhil says, his eyes narrowing further as he glances in Mom’s general direction, “… is your mom.”

“Oh. Right.” Five nods, placing his mug down. “She’s older than she looks, too. I’m— wait,” he pauses, brow furrowing as he looks toward Mom. “Actually, Mom, how old _are_ you, anyway?”

Mom starts pouring broth into the pot and answers over her shoulder, “I was created in 1993, dear. I’ve had the pleasure of caring for you children for twenty-nine wonderful years.”

“Huh.” Five slumps back into his seat, raising his eyebrows. “I guess she’s _not_ older than she looks. But mentally? Do robots age?” He shakes his head. He’s letting himself get distracted, and he can always ask Mom about the relativity of A.I. aging some other time. “Anyway, that’s not really the point. _I’m_ definitely in my sixties. The fact that I look sixteen is a simple product of time dilation.”

Nikhil makes a face, chewing slowly on a bite of cake.

“… Simple,” he repeats, all skepticism.

Five huffs a sigh, looking toward the ceiling. “Okay. I don’t really have the time to explain it fully, not unless you happen to have a graduate level understanding of quantum theory, but — look, you saw that I can jump through space, right?”

Nikhil nods.

“So, does it take that much of a stretch to believe that I can jump through time, too?”

The kid’s eyes widen, and he sets his fork down. “You can _time travel?”_

“As a point of fact, _technically,_ yes,” Five admits. “But the physics behind it can be… tricky. It’s a crapshoot under the best of circumstances. What, you think I wanted to look like—” he waves at himself up and down — “this? No, I didn’t. It’s a side effect. So, yes, I can time travel, but I try my best not to unless I have no other option.”

Doesn’t seem relevant to bring up that time travel _itself_ isn’t all that tricky when you really get down to it. Doesn’t seem relevant to bring up that, if you’re not pushing through the time stream without a briefcase and with nothing but the clothes on your back — as Five had done — it usually goes off without a hitch.

And Five doesn’t really feel like getting into the whole Commission thing anyway, so he doesn’t.

“So, you’re… sixty,” Nikhil says.

“Roughly, yeah. I know it’s a little hard to believe.”

Nikhil shakes his head, leaning back in his seat. He still keeps glancing over his shoulder, still looks on hyper alert, but some of the bravado is back. If Five weren’t specifically trained to detect otherwise, he might even say the kid looks at ease. “Nah, I believe it,” he says, shooting a judging look at Five. “You’re… kind of weird, for a teenager. You know that, right?”

Five shrugs one shoulder, takes another sip of his coffee. Mom _definitely_ slipped a mix of decaf into this, but he’s not about to go making a fuss over it. “I should hope so,” he says, “since I’m not one.”

“And you kind of walk like an old man, too.”

Five blinks. He actually hadn’t expected that. “Do I?”

Nikhil nods, but he doesn’t elaborate, his eyes trailing over the kitchen slowly, seemingly trying to take it all in. “So, what, you’re like some kind of weird Professor X or something?”

“Some kind of _what?”_

The kid smirks. “Yeah, like I said, weird for a teenager. And Professor X is like, a superhero teacher. And this… place,” the kid says, pointing vaguely up and waving around, “is like… It’s like a school for superheroes? Is that it?”

A bemused smile is all Five can think to give at first. He has no idea what a Professor X is, but either way, he’s fairly certain that whatever Nikhil’s picturing is very, very far from what this place actually is. It’s not a school, really; it barely counted as a school even back when he and his siblings got all of their education within these walls.

It’s just… where he lives. It’s just his house. His home.

And while Five certainly has plenty of experience with teaching his siblings how to use their abilities, he would hardly call himself a _professor._

He’s about to open his mouth and say as much, but he’s interrupted before he can. Nikhil tenses up all over again and directs his suddenly wide eyes toward the kitchen doorway, and Five frowns, twisting in his seat to look over his shoulder and see whatever it is that’s got the kid so frightened all of a sudden—

Oh. Shit.

“Claire,” Five says, his own eyes wide and his voice an octave too high. “Hey.”

She’s standing in the kitchen doorway in her matching pink-and-purple pajamas, rubbing one eye and smiling a toothy little grin at Five.

“Oh, hello, sweetheart,” Mom calls from the stove.

“Hi, Nana. Hi, Uncle Five.” She drops her hand, blinking curiously up at Nikhil. “Who’s your friend?”

Five gulps, slowly pushing his chair back as he stands, automatically on the defensive. It’s not that he really thinks the kid would do anything to hurt Claire. It’s not that he believes Nikhil would hold any ill will toward an innocent little girl he’s only just met, but — well, Five just doesn’t know _how_ he’ll react to Claire. As of now, Nikhil is still an unknown, a variable.

And Five does not like variables where his niece is concerned.

“Uh, Claire,” Five says. “What are you doing up? It’s almost ten.”

Claire shrugs. “I got hungry and I smelled Nana cooking,” she says, then smiles again and waves at Nikhil. “Hi. I’m Claire.”

“I’m…” he glances at Five, like he’s gauging whether he’s allowed to talk to her or not, and eventually answers, “… Nikhil.”

“Hi, Nikhil,” she says, walking around Five toward the fridge. “What are you making, Nana?”

“Chicken soup, sweetheart. Would you like some when it’s ready?”

“Yes, please,” Claire says, opening up the fridge and perusing its contents. “Nikhil, are you _actually_ a teenager? Or are you real old inside like my Uncle Five?”

Five snorts in spite of himself. “Uh, Claire, you’re gonna want to make sure Nikhil can see you when you talk, okay? He can’t hear, so he has to read your lips.”

Claire turns around, letting the fridge door swing shut behind her as she works at stabbing a straw into a juicebox, and she looks up to find Nikhil twisted around in his seat to look at her.

“Do you know sign language?” she asks.

Nikhil glances over his shoulder at Five, then looks back at her and nods.

“Me, too,” Claire says and takes a sip from her juicebox. “My mommy had to use sign language for a while ‘cause her throat was hurt and she couldn’t talk, and even though her throat got better we still sign sometimes when we’re in loud places or just ‘cause I wanna practice.”

She takes another long sip from the juicebox, her big brown eyes unwavering on Nikhil.

 _“And,”_ she continues when she comes up for air, “there’s a girl who goes to school with me in California where I live, and she’s deaf so she has an _interpreter_ who signs all of our classes for her. And her interpreter is _really_ good at sign language, like, he can sign super duper fast, way faster than me. And anyway, our teacher made sure we all know a lot of sign language so we can talk to her, but I’m the best at it since I already knew a bunch of it. I talk to her a lot at recess. She’s really cool, her name’s Emily and she has red hair that’s almost as curly as mine. She wants to be a fireman when she grows up.”

She takes one more sip from the juicebox and then pins it between her arm and her side, freeing up both of her hands.

“It’s nice to meet you,” she says, signing as she talks. “Do you want a juice?”

Miraculously, Nikhil actually smiles back at her, the first genuine smile that Five thinks he’s seen from him yet. And maybe it’s Claire using her powers to make him feel more at ease, or maybe she sensed his trepidation as soon as she walked in and actively decided to be extra nice to him in the only way she knows how, or — hell, Five thinks, maybe it’s just _her._

That little kid innocence invariably puts everyone at ease, after all, from brooding vigilantes to PTSD-stricken war veterans to severely damaged time-traveling assassins and everything in between.

Whatever it is, Nikhil is no exception to it. That soft smile doesn’t leave his face as he signs what Five believes is a _no, thank you,_ and Claire hops up onto the seat beside him.

Five relaxes incrementally.

Okay, he thinks. Maybe this won’t be a total disaster after all. Maybe, somehow, things are actually going to go _smoothly_ for once in this family’s entire ridiculous existence.

… Maybe.

 

 

“So then I told him, I said, ‘Emilio, you _gotta_ find a hobby. Trust me on that.’ Told him it doesn’t matter what it is, just as long as it’s something that keeps him focused, something that’s… you know, _not_ heroin, ideally,” Klaus says, pushing his shoulder blades into the passenger seat and stretching his arms in front of him, which always gives Diego the impression of a stir crazy alleycat. He shimmies down deeper into the seat and props his bare feet up on the dash, only for Diego to swat them back down again, and for once — miracle of miracles — Klaus takes the hint and leaves them down.

“And what’d he say to that?”

Klaus shrugs, looking out the side window at the lights passing by. “Said the only way he knows how to stay focused _is_ with heroin. Said he doesn’t know what else there is.”

“He’s bullshitting you.”

“It was just… a bad day for him.”

“Which means he was _definitely_ bullshitting you.”

Klaus sighs. “I know.”

“Yeah, I _know_ you know. You better know. Remember that time you told me you’d stay clean a lot longer if you had one more quick hit to hold you over?”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“And how about the time you tried pulling that shit on Luther, huh?”

Klaus, by now, has pulled one foot up onto the seat with him, hugging his knee to his chest and resting his chin on it. Diego glances over just in time to see him trying to suppress a smile at the memory, eyes fixed straight ahead at the city lights.

Because it _is_ funny, in retrospect. Even if Klaus had been livid at the time.

“How long did he keep you over his shoulder?” Diego asks. “Six hours?”

“Eight, I think.”

Diego chuckles, rolling to a stop at a red light. In the distance, another car blares its horn. Across the intersection a cluster of teenagers crosses the road, yelling and laughing and shoving at each other.

“Thing is,” Klaus says. “Emilio doesn’t have any brothers. Let alone brothers as stubborn as _you_ two. Or, you know, one that’s got the stamina to lift him up in the air for hours at a time when the shakes start to hit.”

“Got you, though, doesn’t he?”

Klaus falls silent, and when Diego glances over he sees him chewing on his thumbnail, staring out the side window again.

“What about that whole sponsor thing?” Diego presses, looking ahead as the light turns green. “That still something you’re planning on doing?”

“Oh, uh… Yeah. Sure. Eventually.”

“But what, not now? Why not?”

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Klaus shrug one shoulder. “Not… I don’t know. I shouldn’t be Emilio’s sponsor, I think.”

“That right?” Diego asks, shooting him a look with one eyebrow raised, a look that Klaus doesn’t notice. Seems he’s moved on from chewing on his thumbnail to absently toying with those dog tags around his neck, and Diego’s not sure if he even knows he’s doing it. “What’s wrong with Emilio?”

“Nothing. Nothing’s wrong with Emilio. He’s… nice.”

“But you still don’t wanna be his sponsor.”

Klaus shrugs again.

“Sounds to me like you’re already doing half the job, hanging out with him, giving him advice, all that,” Diego points out, turning the car and pulling them down the street that leads up to the Academy. “Sounds to me like you might be the perfect guy for it.”

“Yeah, I just… don’t think I should.”

Diego nods, chewing on his cheek for a second, and then he decides to just come out with it. Screw dancing around the issue. “That because you don’t want to spend more time around this guy? Worried you might get… you know, too attached to him?”

At that, Klaus jerks his head away from the window, directing a wide-eyed stare at Diego with his one hand still loosely clinging to the dog tags.

_“What?”_

“I’m just saying,” Diego presses, raising one hand in surrender while the other keeps steering. The Academy gates loom up ahead, automatically rolling open with a faint screech as his car approaches. “You only mention this guy _every single time_ I pick you up from one of your meetings. Obviously you like hanging out with him. So, I dunno, it just sounds like you got a pretty good excuse to see him a whole lot more, but you don’t wanna take it.”

“What— I’m not— that’s not—”

“Or,” Diego cuts in, “it’s the other way around, and you don’t wanna be his sponsor because you’re not supposed to… you know, get _involved_ like that with someone you’re sponsoring.”

“Wha— _Diego,_ it’s not—” Klaus sputters, and then the abject panic on his face fades into relief as his eyes flick toward the back seat. “Oh, thank _Christ,”_ he mutters, slumping even further into his seat and tipping his head back. He closes his eyes, looking like he’s about to take a nap right here in the car. “Ben, my darling dearest departed brother, your timing is _impeccable_ as always.”

“Yeah. Impeccable,” Diego repeats, deadpan, but he offers the presumably not-as-empty-as-it-looks backseat a wave before he shifts the car into park. He always tries to acknowledge Ben when he can, even when Ben’s not visible.

“He said hi,” Klaus murmurs. “And— wait, _what?”_

He opens his eyes wide, sitting up in his seat and twisting at the waist to look at Ben.

“You’re sure?”

“What?” Diego asks, shooting a look at Klaus and then at the general area where he assumed Ben must be. “What’s going on?”

“Uh…” Klaus stares open-mouthed at the backseat, then looks at Diego with that dumbstruck slightly panicked look on his face, and then says, “We… should, uh, go get something to eat, don’t you think?”

_“What?”_

“Yeah! I don’t know about you, but I am _starving,”_ Klaus says, grinning wide and splaying a hand over his stomach. “Benny’s feeling waffles, and I _know_ you could go for a plate of mega fries, and—”

“Klaus. What is going on,” Diego states in that tone that, he hopes, makes it very clear that he’s not asking.

“What’s going _on_ is that I’m hungry, and we…” Klaus trails off, until Diego practically _sees_ the light bulb turn on and he latches onto the first dumbass reason he’s apparently come up with, “… need to celebrate! I’m officially three years and two months sober. Clean as a whistle. That’s a milestone, right?”

“No. It’s not. Three years is a milestone,” Diego tells him. “We all went out to dinner and everything.”

Klaus gasps, all melodramatic and (if Diego was an idiot, which he’s not) genuinely hurt. “You’re saying you’re not _proud_ of me for the last two months?”

Rather than answering — because really, _obviously_ he is, but that much goes without saying and Klaus damn well knows it — Diego just maintains a deadpan, unbroken stare for about ten seconds while he waits for Klaus to crack and tell him what the hell is _really_ going on.

When that doesn’t happen, Diego sighs, turns off the ignition, and gets out of the car.

“Woah, woah, woah, wait, _Diego!”_

As he starts marching up toward the Academy, he hears the passenger side door open and shut behind him, hears Klaus stumbling out of the car with all the grace and stability of a newborn giraffe, but he doesn’t turn around to see, and he doesn’t stop or slow down, either.

Not until Klaus ambles up beside him and slings an arm over his shoulders, leaning all his weight on him so that he _has_ to slow down.

“Klaus.”

“But I—”

“Off.”

“Aw, come _on,_ Diego—”

“Nope,” Diego says, shaking his head, ducking out from under Klaus’ arm, and he shoves him aside for good measure too so that he goes staggering a couple steps away. Diego shoulders his way through the Academy front doors, stepping into the foyer with Klaus jumping in after him, and he immediately hears the sound of a few voices downstairs in the kitchen.

And he has no idea what’s happening in the house that Ben told Klaus about or why Klaus is so adamant that Diego shouldn’t see it, but he figures whatever’s down there is probably as good a guess as any.

Klaus dives in front of him, all panicked hushed noises and flailing arms, but Diego elbows him aside and keeps walking.

“Diego, wait, wait, wait, why don’t we just—? Uh, you can plainly see that I’m _trying,_ Benjamin, _thank_ you, it’s just not getting through his _thick—”_

As Diego makes his way down the stairs, Klaus trips over the very first step with a yelp and almost goes flying face-first toward the basement floor if not for Diego snagging the back of his coat and pulling him back upright.

“Okay, you know what?” Klaus huffs, crossing his arms over his chest and falling into step beside Diego. “Fine. Go ahead. See if I care.”

“Sure thing, bro.”

He ignores Klaus muttering under his breath and steps down onto the basement floor, rounding the corner toward the kitchen. He can already hear the voices a little more distinctly. There’s Claire rambling on loudly and excitedly about something to _Auntie Vanya,_ though what the kid’s doing up this late Diego has no idea. There’s also Mom saying something he can’t quite make out, and Five, too.

Luther’s deep voice carries further than any of the rest, rumbling through the floor as he talks.

“… tried to make it myself last week,” he’s saying, in a tone that makes Diego think he must be talking to Mom, “but it just didn’t come out exactly right. I’m not sure what…”

As Diego steps into the kitchen with Klaus in tow, everyone in the kitchen falls silent.

Diego has a few seconds to register the fact that _everyone’s_ here despite it being well past ten; Luther is leaning against the counter beside Mom who’s stirring something on the stove, Five and Claire and Allison and Vanya are all sitting around the kitchen table, all of them staring straight at him and Klaus.

There’s about another half second for his eyes to land on the one face at the kitchen table that he _doesn’t_ know. Not in person, anyway.

_Holy—_

Diego blinks, and the kid’s gone.

_— shit._

He’s just… gone.

The chair barely moves. It skids half an inch back on the floor and then stays there. Diego blinks again, once, twice, three times, eyes widening like the kid might reappear out of thin air again. But the kid remains gone, and the kitchen remains deadly quiet, and everyone else in the room takes a few seconds to process the now empty chair between Claire and Vanya.

“Damn it, Diego,” Five groans, massaging the bridge of his nose, like it’s somehow Diego’s fault that the kid was too skittish to stay in one place. “I was making _progress.”_

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
> 
> (don't worry he'll be back very soon i wouldn't do you guys like that)


	13. conditions

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [rolls in two months later with starbucks]
> 
> so uh... happy birthday? :D

“Woah, woah, woah, you’re blaming _me_ for—?”

“Yes, I’m blaming you,” Five cuts him off, arms crossed over his chest as he glares at Diego. _“Obviously_ I’m blaming you.”

“Oh, what, so I’m not allowed in the _house_ now—?”

“Hey, look at that, big guy,” Klaus says, ignoring Five’s and Diego’s argument in favor of nudging Luther as he passes him by and slings an arm around Mom in a sideways hug. “He ended up coming to us after all. Score one for Number One, eh?”

“Well, uh… yeah, I mean, I guess, not that it matters—”

“Not that it matters now that _Diego scared him off,”_ Five interrupts Luther, rolling his eyes.

“Guys,” Vanya speaks up, as usual too quiet and hesitant to derail all of them yelling over each other.

“I wouldn’t have _scared him off_ if he didn’t have anything to hide—”

“Oh, yeah? You barging in here like you own the place—”

“Hey, come on,” Allison tries. “All he did was come inside.”

“And it _is_ his house, too,” Luther murmurs.

“Oh, you’re on _his_ side, now?” Five asks.

“Yeah, he is!” Diego shouts at the same time as Luther says, “Well, no, but—”

“But nothing—!”

“The _hell_ you mean you’re not on my side?” Diego asks, rounding on Luther.

“He shouldn’t be!” Five argues. “Seriously, I was _this_ close to—”

“To a wanted criminal that tried to _kill_ us yesterday?” Diego asks him. “Yeah, you friggin’ were.”

“He didn’t,” Luther mutters, and his cheeks and ears flush bright red as Diego directs a wide-eyed stare at him, eyebrows raised. Number One hunches in on himself a little, which does fuck-all to make him look any less huge, and he shrugs. “He, uh… didn’t try to kill us.”

“Oh?” Diego asks. “We’re still going with the whole _he didn’t mean to_ theory, then, huh?”

“It’s not a _theory,”_ Five cuts in. “We confirmed it—”

Diego adds, “With the wanted criminal—”

“Guys—”

“With the _kid,”_ Five corrects, either not noticing Vanya speaking up again or too steamed to divert any attention at the moment.

“He told us everything, Diego,” Allison tells him.

“And you _believed him?”_

“Yeah, we did,” Allison insists, glaring a little with her hands on her hips. “Is it that hard to believe?”

“Uh, _yeah,_ it really—”

“Diego, we’ve all done things we didn’t mean to because of our powers,” she reminds him.

“I sure as hell haven’t!”

“Okay,” she plows right on, undeterred. “Most of us have.”

Luther’s already nodding. “I just broke the door frame to my bedroom, like, two days ago.”

Diego opens his mouth and very nearly says, _you didn’t almost kill anybody, though, did you,_ until he snaps his mouth shut. Definitely not a good idea to draw attention to the fact that, yes, actually, Luther _has_ accidentally killed because of his powers before, way back when they were all kids and still running under dear old Dad’s orders.

It’d be a dick move to bring up. It would also, more importantly, be detrimental to his argument.

And in any case, Klaus and Allison and Five are all already talking at once.

“Hey, score _two_ for Number One! He didn’t mean to flip the car after all—”

“He’s just a kid, Diego, it’s not all that hard to believe that—”

“Now I have to track him down all over again, and who _knows_ how far he’ll have gotten with how fast he—”

“It’s not _my_ fault, man,” Diego cuts in again, getting more incensed by the second. “You could have _mentioned_ you had the friggin’ jewelry thief just chilling in—”

“Oh, for God’s sake, Diego,” Allison sighs. “He already agreed to return the jewelry.”

“Yeah? _Did_ he!”

“Hey, guys—?”

“Ugh, come _on,_ do you guys really have to turn _everything_ into—”

“As a matter of fact, he did,” Allison shouts over Klaus, glaring at Diego like she doesn’t understand why he won’t just come around, like she always looks at him when they argue these days and she can’t just _rumor_ him into agreeing. Not anymore, not like when they were kids. “We all talked to him about it, and he hasn’t sold any of it yet, so—”

“Uh-huh, okay, so now that he’s been caught, he’s turning over a whole new leaf, yeah? You don’t think that’s a little convenient—?”

“Oh, don’t be a—”

“He _did_ agree to return all of it,” Luther speaks up again. “And in exchange, we agreed that we wouldn’t turn him in to the authorities.”

“Did you, now?” Diego asks, raising his eyebrows at Luther again. “And that was your call to make? Think I missed the part where this whole thing became your case, bro—”

“Hey, come on, you know I didn’t mean—”

Allison comes to his defense, bristling. _“Seriously,_ Diego—?”

“— guys really are worse than the ghosts, I swear—”

“I’m just saying, if I’d have been here—”

“You would have scared him off even sooner—”

 _“I wouldn’t have,”_ Diego raises his voice over Five’s. “And I’m thinking it would’ve been better if I was here, since apparently I’m the only one of us that’s not naive enough to take everything this kid says at face value, and—”

“Oh, really, you think I would have even _survived_ the Commission without learning how to tell if someone’s—”

_“GUYS.”_

It’s not so much the volume of Vanya’s voice that gets them all to shut the hell up.

It’s more the fact that the entire kitchen lurches like it’s caught in a half second long earthquake, like that single syllable hadn’t come from their tiny little sister at all but instead from an angry, petulant giant that felt the need to grab the whole house and give it a shake to make itself heard. The pots and pans hanging from above the stove clang and bang against each other, a bit of plaster dislodges from the ceiling and spirals down to the floor in a thin plume of powder, and Diego has to glance down just to be sure he keeps his feet rather than falling back on his ass.

The rest of them all turn to direct their wide eyes at Vanya—

And it’s then, finally, that Diego remembers Claire.

Not that he’d actually _forgotten_ her. Obviously. It’s just that he was… distracted. But there she is, all four-and-a-half feet of her standing right beside her Auntie Vanya, her soft little kid features all pinched in an angry glare and her arms crossed tight over her chest. Diego would’ve expected that she’d be upset or scared or overwhelmed at being witness to all her uncles and her mom and her aunt all yelling over one another (would’ve been guilty as all hell over it the second he realized, but he definitely would have expected it) and instead she doesn’t look like any of those things.

She just looks _pissed._

Vanya takes a slow breath, puffing it out all at once and shaking out her shoulders.

“Go ahead and say that again, Claire,” she murmurs, her voice once again returned to its quiet mousiness now, despite the underlying tension Diego can’t help but notice. “No one else heard it.”

Everyone’s eyes shift to Claire, and she directs that pissy little look at _everybody,_ not just Diego.

“What is it, baby?” Allison asks.

“Are you alright, dear?” asks Mom, speaking up for the first time since this whole argument got started.

“Yeah, honey bunch,” Klaus says, “you okay?”

Claire glances up at Vanya, who just shrugs and gestures at everyone else as if to say, _Go ahead,_ and apparently that’s all the encouragement she needs.

“You are all,” Claire says, gritting her teeth, “So. _Stupid.”_

Diego blinks, eyes widening, and he imagines he must look just as dumbstruck as the rest of them do. Allison’s got her hands on her hips again, her brow creased. Luther’s jaw hangs open, while Klaus keeps opening and closing his like a fish out of water, evidently lost on what to say. Hell, the kid might as well have grown a second _head_ for the way Five’s staring at her.

“Claire,” Allison says when she finally regains her senses. “That’s not very nice.”

“I don’t _care,”_ Claire insists, and now she’s glaring, if possible, even harder at all of them. “You’re all being _stupid.”_

“Claire!”

Diego opens his mouth, then closes it, his mind running at a mile a minute with nothing but a big old blank to show for it.

And it isn’t until he realizes that — underneath a thick layer of concern and confusion over how upset Claire seems to be — he’s still _really goddamn pissed off_ at Five and Luther and Klaus and all of them for reasons he can’t quite describe, that Diego finally starts to piece together what the hell’s going on.

Fuck. Damn it.

He _is_ an idiot. They all are.

“Uh, kid,” he says, gently, and as Claire’s glare turns toward him he forces himself to take a nice slow breath. _In, one, two, three. Out, one, two, three. Relax, Hargreeves. Breathe._ “Can you, uh… take a breath for me real quick? Just, you know, like I’m doing? Nice and slow?”

She looks at him like _he’s_ grown a second head. “Why?”

“Just trust me, yeah?”

He does it again, in for three counts, then blows it out through pursed lips all dramatic and showy until his lungs are totally empty.

And Diego’s not… _totally_ sure if what’s going on is what he _thinks_ is going on. Were Claire’s emotions leaking through to all of them and taking their annoyance and dialing it up to a hundred? Was she just getting more angry because she could sense them getting pissed off at each other? Definitely could have been both, he supposes, their anger feeding into hers and vice versa, an endless loop of anger getting stronger at every pass like a damn water wheel.

He doesn’t know, but whatever. This should help either way.

Klaus is the first one that seems to figure out what he’s getting at, judging by the way he looks like a light bulb just went off in his brain. Then it seems to dawn in quick succession on Allison, then Vanya, then Five and Luther. Allison looks crestfallen for a second, her shoulders slumping, and then she crouches down in front of Claire so that she’s at her eye level.

“Hey, we didn’t mean to get so worked up,” she says in her gentlest Mom voice. “We’re sorry we upset you, baby.”

Claire frowns at her mom, then takes a slow breath like Diego told her to — even if she’s a little more huffy about it than he’d have wanted. It seems to work anyway, a little bit. Some of the red hot anger bubbling in his own stomach starts to dull to a simmer, at least.

“You okay, peanut?”

Claire pouts a little, then shrugs one shoulder.

“Okay,” Allison says, nodding. “We all just got a little angry and got ahead of ourselves there. That was our bad, though. You’re allowed to be a little mad at us for that.”

“Yeah, like you said,” Klaus adds, offering her a smile, “we all can be pretty stupid sometimes, right?”

Claire takes another breath, then her shoulders slump as she lets it out. Diego swears he sees a flash of guilt cross her features, but it disappears quick enough as she bites her cheek. She mutters, “I didn’t say you were all stupid ‘cause you were yelling at each other.”

Luther asks, “Then why did you, munchkin?”

 _“Because,”_ Claire says, suddenly finding her socks very interesting, “I was having a really good time talking to Nikhil and he’s really super nice except he was kinda scared and then he got _way_ more scared and then he ran away, and you guys were fighting so much all just ‘cause _you—”_ she looks up at Diego — “don’t think Nikhil was telling the truth and you think he’s not nice, and you—” she waves at Five and Allison and Luther all at once — “all _do_ think he was telling the truth and that he _is_ nice, and you all just kept fighting and fighting and fighting about it and nobody thought it would be a good idea to just _ask_ me.”

“Ask you?” Diego repeats without thinking.

Claire nods. “Yeah.”

Allison frowns. “Honey… What do you mean? Ask you what?”

“If he was telling the truth,” Claire says, raising her eyebrows as if to say _duh._

“Claire,” Five speaks up, crossing his arms. “You can tell that?”

“Kinda, yeah.”

“How?”

She shrugs. “I dunno. Everybody gets, like, a special kind of scared when they’re lying? And Nikhil was just the _normal_ kind of scared. Like… like when I cheated on my quiz that one time, remember, Mommy? And Sally Wilson saw me and tattle taled and I _knew_ I was gonna get in really big trouble and I was _so_ scared and I felt really bad the whole day, like I was gonna throw up? That’s the kind of scared he was, except a whole lot more. And _then,”_ she continues, directing her explanation at everyone again, “when Mommy and Auntie Vanya came downstairs, he felt a little less scared ‘cause… I dunno, I think he feels better around girls than around boys maybe. And he was scared of Uncle Luther at first, too, but then I told him that Uncle Luther was nice and that he went to the moon before and then Nikhil wasn’t so scared anymore.”

“But… why would that make him less scared of me?” Luther asks, tilting his head and regarding her with his arms crossed.

She shrugs again. “He likes space. He told me about it when we were talking about school.”

“Claire,” Five says. “What about when I told him he’d have to return all that jewelry he stole? What was he feeling then?”

“Sad, mostly,” she answers without hesitation. “Or, like… I guess sad-mad, but more sad. The only time he wasn’t sad or mad or scared was when he was talking to me about school and about his little sister. Oh, and when you asked him if we wanted to stay here. Then, too.”

Diego’s eyes widen, and he blinks before he turns that look on Five, the _how the hell did you not mention that before_ kind of look, but Five doesn’t even acknowledge it.

Luther, at least, has the decency to wince.

“When they asked him what, now, kid?” Diego asks, turning back to her.

“If he wanted to stay here.”

“I think it’s a wonderful idea,” Mom pipes up, flashing a smile at them from where she’s been neatly stacking little containers of food into the fridge, as unbothered by their arguing as ever. Beside her, Klaus is leaning back against the counter, slurping from one of the tupperwares like he’s never heard of a spoon before and, occasionally, glancing at what Diego can only assume is Ben and nodding along to a silent conversation.

“So…” Diego says, “what, we’re just gonna—?”

“We’ll talk about it later, Diego,” Five interrupts, his eyes still on Claire.

“Now, that,” Allison nods, “is _definitely_ a good idea. It is way past Claire’s bedtime.”

“But _Mom—”_

“No buts, you little troublemaker,” Allison tells her, ruffling her hair and ferrying her toward the kitchen door. “You’re lucky you got to stay up this late.”

“But what if Nikhil comes back?” Claire asks, stopping where the kitchen tile ends and refusing to budge another step. “And what if he’s scared and the only people awake are people he’s scared of and then he runs away again and he _never_ comes back and—”

“Claire, honey,” Mom speaks up, and then all eyes are on her as she shuts the fridge door and turns her own eyes on Claire alone. “Was Nikhil frightened of me?”

Claire frowns, shaking her head. “No, he thought you were nice, Nana.”

“Well, then, maybe I should stay awake through the night in the event that he does return,” Mom tells her with a gentle smile. “That way someone he is _not_ afraid of will be awake to greet him, and you can get to bed without a worry. Does that sound better?”

It’s funny, Diego thinks, watching Claire war with herself between the fact that she clearly wants to stay awake anyway, the fact that Mom is almost _impossible_ to disagree with at the best of times, and the fact that she looks like she’s running on fumes as it is, ready to collapse into bed the second she gets upstairs.

Eventually, though, the latter two win out and Claire sighs. “Okay. Yeah. Thanks, Nana.”

Mom’s smile widens, crinkling her eyes. “Goodnight, dear.”

“Night, Nana,” Claire says as Allison continues guiding her out of the kitchen, this time with far less resistance. “Night, everybody.”

There’s a chorus of _goodnights_ from the rest of them, each one tagged with a different nickname for her, but she gets the gist. Vanya runs both hands over her face, yawning, and follows them upstairs, too. Klaus, still slurping soup from a tupperware, resumes his murmured conversation with the empty space that’s probably Ben, Mom hums a little melody to herself as she starts wiping down the kitchen counters, and Five huffs an annoyed sigh and allows himself to drop back into one of the kitchen chairs.

“Times like these a drink would be nice,” he mutters, massaging the bridge of his nose.

“Now, Five—”

“Kidding, Mom,” he says, automatic. “Not actually going to.”

Luther closes the distance between him and Diego in a few quick strides, and he leans in, speaking lowly and just for Diego to hear. “Hey. Can we…?”

He nods in the direction of the kitchen doorway, and Diego sighs, shrugging one shoulder.

“Sure, why not.”

He lets Luther lead the way, trailing behind with his arms crossed over his chest, fingers drumming along his bicep. As soon as they reach the relative privacy of the stairwell, Luther turns around to face him and, after a quick glance in the direction of the kitchen, he asks, “You know I wasn’t actually trying to take your case from you, right? You just weren’t here when the kid happened to show up, and—”

“Dude,” Diego interrupts him, raising a hand to stop him. “I know.”

Luther deflates, like, _visibly._ He’d clearly been prepped for the need to actually defend himself against an argument that’s no longer happening. “You… You do?”

“Yeah. First off, you couldn’t take my case from my if you wanted to,” Diego says, leaning in and narrowing his eyes at Luther as if to say _come on, man, you know that much,_ to which Luther only rolls his eyes a little, nodding in reluctant agreement. “And second off, I know you don’t want to. Private investigating isn’t exactly your thing, bro.”

Luther straightens his shoulders a bit. “It _could_ be.”

“It’s not,” Diego assures him. He doesn’t mean it as a bad thing, but that’s not really the issue here. “Anyway, I don’t care about the _case._ What I care about is the fact that there was a wanted criminal—” he points at the open kitchen doorway— “who flipped over a car with all of us still in it yesterday, sitting two goddamn feet away from our eight-year-old niece.”

“He wasn’t a—”

“What I care about,” Diego presses on before Luther can get going, “is that I know next to nothing about this kid outside of the laws he’s broken and the things he’s stolen and the people he’s tried to hurt, and you guys went ahead and… what, offered him some kinda off the books amnesty deal? Offered to let the kid _stay_ here? In our house, where — one more time — our _eight-year-old niece_ is sleeping?”

“Diego, this house is full of people who can do things no one else can do.”

“Yeah? So? You think just cause Claire has powers we can just go ahead and let anyone—”

“I’m not saying that,” Luther cuts him off. “All I said is that this house is full of people who can do things no one else can do. So, we… you know. Accommodate.”

It takes Diego a second, and when he realizes, he lets out a groan and scrubs his hands over his face. “Oh, no. No way. You do _not_ get to use my own words against me. I said that because you broke a punching bag, man. That’s _different.”_

Luther wrinkles his nose. “Is it?”

“Well— I mean, no, but it’s… _ugh._ That is so goddamn unfair.”

The shit-eating grin on Luther’s face tells him that he knows exactly how unfair it is, and that he doesn’t care one bit.

“Who the hell are you? Huh?” Diego asks. “My brother doesn’t play dirty. He doesn’t know _how.”_

Luther shrugs, but his smug grin turns a little more serious. “Really, though, Diego. You have to admit this would be a good place for him.”

“What, in a house full of other superpowered assholes? Oh, yeah,” Diego deadpans. “That shit worked out great for us, didn’t it? The kid’ll only have about a million different psychoses by the time he hits eighteen.”

“We’re different now, Diego, you know that. We can do better than Dad did. Not that that’s, you know, that high of a bar to reach.”

“Don’t shit talk Dad, it makes it impossible to disagree with you.”

“Okay, but I _am_ serious.”

“So am I,” Diego shoots back, throwing his hands up. “He’s just a kid, yeah, but he’s not _just_ a kid. He stole so much shit that he’s probably broken _Klaus’_ record at this point—”

“That sounds like an exaggeration—”

“— he tried to kidnap his own sister—”

“— from a bad foster home, he said—”

“— and he flipped over a car with _us_ still in it!”

“He really didn’t mean to, Diego,” Luther insists. “He saw us watching his mom’s house, he got scared, and he thought he could scare us off by running by and rocking the car. He just, you know, overdid it a little bit.”

Diego drops his hands to his sides, exhaling through his nose and directing a pointed look at Luther.

“Okay,” Luther relents. “He overdid it a _lot_ a bit.”

“You think?”

“He was terrified, Diego.”

“Yeah, you mentioned—”

“No, not… I’m not talking about him getting scared and then trying to rock the car. I’m talking about _after._ He was terrified when he saw the car flip and he just— bolted. _Literally,_ in his case. He didn’t even see Five jump us out of the car. He thought he killed us.”

“He almost did.”

“And he was really relieved to find out that he didn’t,” Luther tells him. “Really, really relieved. I could see it. I know you can’t—” he pauses, breaks eye contact for a second. “I know you can’t really relate to it _specifically,_ because your power’s a little more… _controlled,_ I guess, but trust me on this, okay? It can be scary. Not knowing how much is too much. It takes a lot of getting used to.”

Diego lets his shoulders sag, and then he throws his head back, groaning. “That is _also_ unfair, bro.”

“Yeah,” Luther admits. “But it’s true.”

Diego lets his groan drag on, to the point that it almost starts to sound like a whine, and he stares up at the ceiling like it might offer some answers. Which it never does. “I still know next to nothing about the kid. I’ve never even talked to him.”

“But you’re willing to?”

“I’m not saying I’m cool with him just _staying_ here, no strings attached,” Diego warns him, shooting him a look. “There’s gotta be… I don’t know, rules. Conditions.”

Luther gives an agreeing frown, nodding along. “Okay, well—”

“Did you two kiss and make up yet?”

“Jesus. God. Damn. _Christ._ Five,” Diego hisses, flexing his fingers against the instinct to reach for a knife as Five appears out of nothing right between the two of them. “You were _one_ room away, would it have killed you to walk?”

“Or call for us?” Luther asks.

“And risk waking Claire up again? No, thank you,” Five answers without, Diego notices, acknowledging the suggestion to walk. “Just thought you two might want to know the kid came back.”

 _“What?”_ Diego shouts. “Already?”

“Yeah,” Five says, shrugging. “He’s fast.”

“Is he—?” Luther starts to ask, looking over Five’s shoulder at the kitchen doorway. “What, he’s here?”

“No, not anymore.”

Diego throws his hands up. “You lost him _again?”_

“I didn’t _lose_ him,” Five insists. “He came back, and then he left.”

“I didn’t see him,” Luther says, twisting at the waist to glance up the staircase as if the kid’s gonna pop into existence on the ground floor.

“Again, in case it has escaped both of you,” Five says, “he is _very_ fast. You wouldn’t have seen anything.”

“Yeah, no shit—”

“Why did he come back, Five?” Luther asks. “Did he… I don’t know, _say_ anything?”

“If you count this,” Five tells them, pulling a crinkled and folded-in-half piece of paper from the inside pocket of his jacket and waving it at both of them, “as saying something, then yes. He said something. Dropped this on the table right in front of me.”

For a moment there’s just silence, both Diego and Luther staring wide-eyed at him and waiting for him to continue.

When he doesn’t, Diego says, “Five. _What_ did he say.”

“Well, I don’t know yet, do I?” Five asks, waving the paper in their faces again. “Because you were so pissed about being left out of the loop earlier, I figured you’d want me to let you know about it before I read it. Now come on.”

He turns and gestures for them to follow, blinking out of existence and — judging by the creak of a kitchen chair — reappearing in the kitchen. Diego runs both hands over his face again, shaking his head and following behind, Luther close at his heels.

“Well, Five?” Luther asks, pulling out the chair directly across from Five and all but collapsing back into it. Klaus is seated at the table now, or _on_ it, anyway, watching their eldest brother with rapt attention and a mug of tea held in his hands. Even Mom’s paying attention now, standing at the end of the table with her hands held in front of her and watching as Five unfolds the paper. “What’s it say?”

The paper looks like it’s been ripped out of a book, judging by the uneven tear along one side and the dog-eared corner up top. Five’s forehead creases as his eyes scan over the page, and then he raises his eyebrows, sitting back against his seat.

“Huh.”

“What’s _huh?”_ Diego asks, the only one other than Mom who’s still standing.

“He’s in,” Five says, still reading. “He’ll return all the jewelry, he’ll stop squatting at his old house, and he’ll stay here as long as we let him and as long as we keep our promise and _don’t_ send him to prison.”

“Wow,” Luther says.

Diego frowns. “So if he’s all in, then why didn’t he just tell us that in person?”

“Because…” Five says, slowly lowering the paper onto the table, “… there’s a catch.”

“Of course there is,” Diego sighs.

“What is it?” Luther asks.

Five chews on his cheek for a second, looking from one of them to the other in turn. Even Klaus and Mom and the empty seat that, presumably, Ben’s been sitting in. “So, when we told him that he wasn’t the only one with… _abilities_ like ours,” Five explains, “we told him what each of our powers are. So we knows, more or less, what all of us can do.”

“So, what, he wants the big guy to lift some heavy stuff for him?” Diego asks, nodding toward Luther.

“Maybe he wants Allison to get him a date,” Klaus offers, gesturing at Diego with his tea. “A little celebrity influence here, a little rumor there…”

“Well, he’s shit out of luck, then, isn’t he?”

Five shakes his head. “He doesn’t want anything from Allison. He wants to talk to _you,_ Klaus.”

Klaus had been sipping at his tea, and he nearly chokes on it, flattening his palm against his chest as he clears his throat. “Ex- _squeeze_ me? He wants to…? Oh, no,” Klaus says, his eyes going wide, his shoulders slumping as he lowers his tea down onto the table. “No, no, that’s… That’s just _depressing._ I can’t bring Mara back, you know I can’t, she’s not—”

“He doesn’t know you can bring ghosts back,” Five tells him. “Just that you can talk to them.”

“Wait,” Diego says. _“Mara?”_

“Oh, uh, yeah,” Klaus says. “She prefers that to Amara.”

“And you know this because…?”

“Because she… was here? Earlier,” Klaus says. “When everybody was arguing. We got to talking for a bit.”

 _“What?!_ You were—? Jesus, Klaus, I thought you were talking to _Ben.”_

“Oh, I was, it was all three of us. It was a nice little _tête-à-tête_ for a while there, er— I guess a _tête-à-tête-à-tête,_ technically.”

“Klaus, for the love of—”

“Hey, there wasn’t exactly a whole lot of time to bring it up!” Klaus defends himself, nearly sloshing his tea everywhere as he gesticulates with both hands. “She ducked out when Claire started giving her speech about how scared the kid was, then half the fam went to bed, and you two went off to have your _secret big brother talk_ even though technically _we’re_ the big brothers in this family, and—”

“So you could summon her, then?” Five asks, cutting off Klaus’ rant.

“Huh? Oh, uh,” Klaus says, drumming his fingers against his mug. “Uh, yeah. Yeah. I guess, sure, but…” He glances to the side, at an empty space of floor, and rolls his eyes. _“Ugh,_ fine. You’re so pushy.”

“Wait, Klaus, is she here now?” Luther asks, eyes widening.

“What? No, I told you she left,” Klaus says. _“Ben’s_ the pushy one. He’s— hang on, I can probably manage—”

He rolls his wrists like he’s trying to crack the joints, and a second later Ben flickers into view like a hazy blue hologram.

“I think it’s a really good idea,” Ben says as Klaus mouths his words with a half-hearted scowl and another eye roll. “I do,” he insists, apparently knowing Klaus was mocking him without having to look. “You always act like there are no good things that come of your powers, but you can do something _really_ good for this kid, Klaus. _And_ his mom.”

 _And for you_ goes unsaid, but they all hear it loud and clear.

“I know, I know,” Klaus says.

“Klaus,” Diego speaks up. “You don’t have to if you don’t want to. You know that.”

“No, I know, I… I want to,” Klaus says, his shoulders hunched as he looks down through his lashes at the mug still in his hands, chewing on his bottom lip and nodding. He always has the uncanny ability to look so _small,_ Diego thinks, when he’s nervous, when he’s dreading something. “I want to,” he repeats, quietly. “It’s just… _oh,_ man, is it gonna suck. But yeah, no, I’ll… I’ll do it.”

“I think you’ll do _wonderfully,_ dear,” Mom says, stepping up to the kitchen table and reaching out to run a hand through his mop of curls, which he gratefully leans into. “What a great opportunity to use your ability to help others.”

“Thanks, Mom.”

“There’s, uh…” Five interjects, then clears his throat. “There’s one more thing.”

“What else?” Luther asks. “Another catch?”

“Yup. Just one more,” Five says, tapping his fingers on the table’s edge as he peers down at the paper again. “He returns the jewelry, Diego gets paid for solving his client’s thievery problem, and we take one very confused superpowered kid off the streets, under… _two_ conditions. He talks to Klaus first. And, uh…”

Five clicks his tongue, hesitating, and then apparently decides to just come out with it.

“… And we get his sister out of foster care, too.”

All of them fall silent, staring wide-eyed at Five while they wait — or at least Diego knows _he’s_ waiting — for Five to say _psych, just kidding, obviously no one here is anywhere near qualified to get a random kid out of foster care, can you imagine?_

“I’m sorry,” Luther says before any of them can come up with anything to say to that. “He wants us to _what?”_

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i should say i won't be surprised if this thing increases in chapter number yet again, so we're looking at... maybe 15, most likely 16 total chapters. maybe 17, who knows, i have very obviously lost control of this fic akjshfkhkhf

**Author's Note:**

> i have a rough plan for how this fic will go, but there's plenty of wiggle room in that plan right now SO if anyone wants to shoot me prompts either in the comments or on [tumblr](http://iguessyouregonnamissthepantyraid.tumblr.com), feel free ~


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